Awesome Ephesus!

Ephesus is a name that resonates in the Ancient World, and with good reason.  When you visit the site you begin to have a real sense of a huge civilisation coming to life...and what a life!  Yes, we've learnt about this stuff since we were in primary school, but walking around this city, on its streets, around the marketplace, and viewing the facade of the famous library of Celsus, seeing temples and the gymnasium, the theatre and the senate meeting house, the mosaics, but most of all the terraced houses with their plasterwork and frescoes.....it makes an immensely powerful impact. It's by far the best preserved ancient site in the mediterranean, and had a permanent population of about 250,000 and that's not including sailors, traders, occasional visitors and pilgrims to the Temple of Artemis. It also contains the church of the virgin mary which apparently is one of St John's 7 sacred sites.  It was great during Greek rule and continued in strength under Roman authority.
Like other cities in the area its importance waned under the onslaught of the silt from the River Maeander. As huge and impressive as it is, the site has only been approximately 15% excavated.  Work is ongoing.

 Above is a view of the Library of Celsus - he's buried underneath it, apparently....

Here is the theatre, a vast piece of architecture and useful to calculate population as the rule was that it had to be capable of seating 10% of the people.  I wonder how many people had accidents on the stairs....they are very steep.  You can see one of the several main roads stretching away to the right.

The view of the theatre in the late afternoon when we returned for the softer light (having left about 11.15am).  On the left in the foreground is the gymnasium for the naked men to prance around in.

Here's the main road running to one side of the market place.  

Now you will notice the remarkable absence of people in these photos, and no, I haven't been removing them in photoshop.  First of all, I'm not that good, and life's too short.

We arrived at the entrance gate when it opened and rushed forth like bullets from a gun to make the most of the quiet.  That was 8am.  By 9am the next lot of tourists arrived but the real throngs came from the cruise ships, and they came in their many hundreds streaming down the roman street like water spilling from a tap, all concentrating only on their own trajectory, oblivious to anyone else, and mainly focussing on taking multiple selfies in a variety of poses:

No matter, it couldn't spoil the place.  It's fabulous and I can't wait to bring Simon and Joshua would particularly love it, for obvious reasons.  

In the afternoon the light was soft and gentle but the sun set behind the hills so I went off the main area to the church of St Mary the Virgin - the story goes that st John brought her to Ephesus after she was persecuted in Jerusalem and she spent her last years here.  The church was still bathed in the fading light so it was a good choice.

We returned for a convivial supper at the LaVista hotel which is very good indeed, and indulged in the last thing I expected, which is good red wine.  We have had various bottles (shared!) and it's very tasty.  They do produce a massive quantity of olive oil, so why not wine too?  They grow on the ground in Capadoccia, now I remember Nahide told us, like tentacles...

More delicious veggies and salad for lunch and the bread was fresh and hot from the oven.  We shared some baklava...yummy.