Ephesus, Turkey Review

While on active duty with the U.S. Navy I was stationed in Sinop, Turkey, a small traditional city on the Black Sea coast.  I lived and worked there for some 1.5 year starting in beginning in of 1983.  While there I had occasion to travel this ancient and beautiful country and one of the places I visited was the ancient Roman city of Ephesus on Turkey's north Western coast on the Mediterranean Sea.   I traveled to the city by car with a friend to the city during the second summer of my stay, and later drove up the coast to Istanbul.

We traveled by plane and bus from Sinop to get to a sleepy little Turkish coastal town called Marimus.  From there we took the ferry to the Greek Isle of Rhodes where we stayed for a week, then took the ferry back and drove up the coast. Marimus was truly a beautiful little town, but it will have to be the subject of another review.  We drove into Ephesus on a clear sunny morning with the intention of only staying for a few hours, but we ended up staying well into the afternoon.  We were the only visitors to a city that was once a center of commerce for both the Roman and Greek Empires, and we walked the streets of the city in silent awe.  Much of the old city's building foundations are still intact, and you can see the outlines of where houses and fountains, libraries, public buildings sport complex's etc used to stand.

But the most striking artifact was the famed Ephesus Library which is partially built into the side of a hill.  Much of the façade still stands providing a wonderful window into Roman and Greek architecture.  Throughout our stay in Ephesus my mind wondered what it would be like to live in such a city at the height of its glory.    

We had lunch on a high hill overlooking the city proper, and afterwards just sat in silence and drunk the city ruins in.  Both my friend and I love ancient history so this was heaven to us both.  By mid afternoon, the sun was doing it best to roast us; in Ephesus there is very little shelter from the sun, and we were forced to get on the road again and continue our journey.

To this day, the memory of Ephesus is burned in my mind.  If you visit Turkey and have a little time a drive down the west coast to visit not only Ephesus, but other cities of the Roman and Byzantine era that dot the coast, would be well worth your time.