Aegean Coast
Top Tips
For now here are some top tips for Ephesus.
back to topEphesus
Ephesus is one of the largest and most fascinating ancient cities
in Turkey, and definitely worth scheduling into your itinerary if
possible; allow half a day or more. It's a huge rambling site with
buildings spanning from early Greek to late Roman, including the
huge theatre where St. Paul preached (and 2 smaller ones), the
famous façade of the Roman Celsus library, fabulous mosaics
in the separately housed patrician villas, plus countless temples,
statues and monumental gates. There's even the remains of a port:
it once stood on the seashore, which is now 5km away.
There's lots of info in every guidebook, and if you're staying at
Terrace Houses you can borrow a fact file on it;
so here are just a few tips:
Park at the lower gate and pay to take a horse and carriage round
the outside of the site to the upper gate, so that you need only
walk through the site in one direction – downhill! There are
also free shuttles but these go via souvenir shops where you're
energetically encouraged to buy.
Don't necessarily try to beat the rush: everyone else does, with
the result that it's actually less busy in the afternoons, if the
heat and your schedule allows.
Do make time for the patrician villas (also called Terrace Houses;
separate entry fee of 10 YTL in 2007), which are halfway down under
a temporary roof: you get the most vivid picture of what it was
actually like to live there, and the floor mosaics are
beautiful.
Other things to look out for:
the temple to the hated tyrant Domitian, the acoustic in the big
theatre, the 4 statues in the niches of the Celsus library.
Take plenty of cold water and snacks; there are canteens at either
end of the site but not within. Unless you're a keen classicist, we
reckon 3-4 hours in the site is about right.
Camel wrestling
If you come in January, try and coincide with the camel wrestling
competition (no kidding) in Ephesus' ancient theatre: after
processing through Selcuk to musical accompaniment, pairs of
ceremonially decorated male camels wrestle for a female in heat
using various tricks. These include tripping the other with foot
tricks ("çengelci"), trapping their opponent's head under
their chest and then trying to sit ("bagci"), and pushing their
rivals to make them retreat ("tekçi").
In reality the fights are fairly tame, with the victor often being
the one who loses interest last, at which point – and this is
the exciting part – he charges for the female, sending
thousands of spectators scattering in all directions, and not just
because he weighs nearly a ton, but also because, in their
excitement, camels spew foamy saliva ... and not only that: being
'retromingent' animals, spectators need to look out for showers of
urine as well.
So bring an umbrella – and come soon: the tournament is
threatened with closure due to a lack of competition camels
(keeping the beasts solely for this purpose is prohibitively
expensive).