ephesus

the zombies apocalypse has started!

we stayed one night in selçuk which is the city close by the ancient greek city of ephesus, it was badly damaged by earthquakes and eventually destroyed by one of the roman leaders. it has been painstakingly restored by international archaeologists and while the restoration is only partial some sense of its former glory can be observed.

it includes the site of the temple of artemis, one of the seven ancient wondors of the world, all that remains is one column constructed of disassociated fragments found at the site. there is also an ampitheatre, library and terrace houses that date from roman occupation.

one thing we have learnt is that there are no distinct ruins remaining to one period, for example, although ephesus was an ancient greek city it was partially destroyed and then rebuilt by the early romans and later the byzantine empire. No doubt early ottaman people also used parts of the city.

so the bottom levels of the ampitheatre are ancient greek in construction, whereas the upper two tiers were added by the romans.

the terrace houses were built on the site of an ancient greek graveyard by the romans.

the ampitheatre was particularly impressive, not hard to imagine the massive crowd baying for blood as the gladiators emerged out of the tunnels to fight to the death!

ephesus was also a center for the construction of sarcophaguses and it was interesting to see how small they were, the average person in those times was obviously rather stout!

after ephesus we drove down to bozburun which is on the peninsula out from marmaris. the drive was stunning, especially the last 100kms or so which climbs up over a large range and plunges down the other side back to the sea. unfortunately we had massive thunder storms and torrential rain all day so no photos!

bozburun is an amazing little fishing and boat building village, almost all of the inhabitants were born here, very little tourism and a stunning location surrounded by steep rocky hills. i will write more about it and where we are staying in the next post.