No journey through Asia Minor is complete without a tumbling tour of the ancient wonder that is Ephesus: world heritage site nominee and arguably one of the most impressive open air museums anywhere. Ephesus (or ‘Efes’ to give the place its Turkish name which also happens to be the name of Turkey’s favourite ale), was one of the most sophisticated cities of antiquity, adorned with grand civic buildings, marble-clad pavements and street lighting.
Perking the Pansies 
Christians do have a respect for history: the Colosseum and Pantheon in Rome were turned into churches to protect them from being raided for building materials.
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Not true, I’m afraid. The Colosseum was never converted into a church and quite a bit of it is missing. The Pantheon was a temple to all the gods. Christians often converted existing religious buildings into churches (as did Moslems, who converted temples and churches in to mosques) and those that weren’t were wilfully destroyed or defiled. There are numerous examples of this all over Anatolia.
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Message from Ahmet, please tell jack that “the note he has written about ephessus is the best short explanation l have ever seen and l would be more than happy to give him the alternate history of the ephessus”. He tried leaving a comment but did not work so I promised to pass this one on to you. Congratulations a compliment from my husband, he has guided in Ephessus for many years however it has been sometime since he has done this job.
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Thanks Yvonne. I take this as a huge compliment and I am really chuffed 🙂
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I can only wish my photos of Ephesus looked like this one…sans people! We toured there last August. It was so hot and packed, waited in line over an hour for the otopark and to buy our tickets. I was so annoyed with it all that I didn’t really get to enjoy the site. 😦 Yes, avoid the summer time!
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That’s a real pity. Try and get there outside summer. You’ll love it.
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I was sitting on my friends verandah one extremely hot day just down the road from Ephusus. We were discussing how lucky we were to live by such an ancient wonder and getting quite lost and carried away with all the history and fascination of it.Imagine how we felt when her Selcuk born husband quipped “Oh thats nothing ,we used to play football on it when we were kids”. My friend and I bumped back to earth as we had to quickly compute our brains, back to just nearly a mere half a century, and wonder whether to laugh or cry .Its the moments like that ,for me, that are the wonder of Turkey and why I loved it so much.
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Amen to that! 🙂
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Sometimes Comments threads need a “like” button.
Efes is one of the coolest places I’ve ever been (not temperature-wise though :). I hope I can go back there one day, perhaps in the dead of winter.
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I hope you manage to get back there soon. I’ve been twice and it wasn’t enough.:-)
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