A Visit to the Roman Ruins of Ephesus

We visited Ephesus on a dreary rainy day, yet it was still spectacular to see where and how people lived more than 3000 years ago.

We were lucky in that our hotel offered free rides to and from the ruins, including instructions to go to a specific vendor’s stall at the exit to have them call for a pick up. We were dropped at the top entrance gate and walked down through the site to the bottom gate. I believe you can enter at either side. Both entrances have restrooms, but there are no restrooms or water or anything sold in the middle of the site. There are food stalls at the bottom gate.

At the time of our visit, the entrance fee was 20 TL (about $11 ). In addition, we opted for both the audio tour ( at 10TL each, not worth it as the explanation and language quality were

horrible) and extra 15 TL to visit to the current excavation of the Terrace Houses (worth every extra lira) which thankfully was covered and allowed us to walk around without the hindrance of umbrellas.

I wish I’d seen these references before our trip and I would have opted out of the rented audio tour:

Rick Steves podcast audio tour of Ephesus

Planning a DIY tour of Ephesus

Before you head to the ruins, you might want to check out the museum in town.

At the entrance there was this introductory sign:

Walking down the main street toward the Library…

Inside the terrace houses which are being painstakingly reassembled:

Jenga!

There are two amphitheaters and they still have surprising acoustics. In fact, we recorded people spontaneously singing. Watch the video here:

Sheep! On the hillside above the ruins.

Of course there were cats everywhere. More on the Cats of Turkey here.