Kusadasi and Ephesus

First stop this morning was the Temple of Artemis, between the ancient city of Efes (Ephesus) and Selcuk. Very little of the temple now remains apart from a single (reconstructed) marble column of the 127 which once stood there, and the site is a bog for most of the year. However, neither time nor earthquakes are to blame for the temple's demise, but rather a 19th century British railroad engineer, who arranged for much of it to be shipped back to the British Museum. Similarly, many of the best relics of Ephesus are now located in a museum in Vienna, but an impressive assortment is still to be found in the Ephesus Museum in Selcuk, including this statue of Artemis, the goddess of fertility.

After a visit to see the house where the Virgin Mary lived, we were dropped off at the upper end of Ephesus to begin our guided walk through the ancient Roman city. As much as 80% of the city is still to be excavated from the surrounding hillsides, but even the parts that have been exposed give one an excellent sense of what life must have been like in the latter era of the Roman Empire. The stack of clay pipes shows how sophisticated their plumbing was, while the amphitheatre in the background served as the local congress. As we made our way down the street, we saw various public buildings (including the communal latrines), fountains, temples, and even fixtures in the paving stones for rigging light poles at night.

Naturally, one of the most impressive (and photographed) structures in Ephesus is the Library of Celsus. In fact, only the facade is still intact, and even that has been reconstructed. To the right, the two large gates lead to the market area.

The grand amphitheatre is still used today for occasional evening concerts, but the traditional contests between Christians and lions (for which the Romans added an extra level to the Greek stage) haven't been held in a while. The acoustics are excellent, as superbly demonstrated by Justin Goodman in an a cappella recital. The amphitheatre fronts on to Harbour Street, though the name seems hardly appropriate today as Ephesus too is now completely landlocked.

Even as we celebrated the end of our journey with one last group dinner at an oceanfront restaurant in Kusadasi, our thoughts were already turning to how the earthquake might affect our onward travel plans. Some of use (me included) were due to fly from Izmir to Istanbul, and then to London, but we didn't know for sure if the airport was still open, let alone if there were any flights in or out. In the end, we were only an hour late leaving Istanbul, mostly due to the large number of military aircraft flying in relief supplies. In central Istanbul, the major monuments (which had withstood many serious earthquakes over the centuries) were all intact. It all seemed so ironic, that this country had borne witness to two of nature's most dramatic events in the same week. Tragic too, that the kinds of people who would open their homes to us, now had no home at all. I wish the Turkish people well, and look forward to returning to Turkey in 2006 for their next tam günes tutulmasi.

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