Trip to Ephesus

So, yesterday I went to Efes (Ephesus) on a day trip.  It was a bit of a chaotic journey, and what with the travel time and all the stops at cafes, tea shops, restaurants and lokum shops I was in Efes for 2.5 hours but away from my hotel for 13 hours!  Of course, these stops at tour company-related places are the way they make money off the excursion - my trip cost barely more than the entrance fee, so it doesn't seem right to complain!  And I do like lokum (Turkish Delight) so that stop was OK....

But there was lots of milling around, wondering what to do and mass confusion.  In the end we all made it there and (hopefully) we all made it back, so I guess it worked out.  But a little organization would have made a big difference!

Anyway, Efes is a really ancient city.  I learned that they have found pottery and weapon remains that date back to 4,000 B.C.  The Greeks made it a major city, and under the Romans it was the capital of their province of Asia (modern western Turkey) and experienced something of a Golden Age.  Then, unfortunately for the people then but fortunately for us, the harbor silted up.  This caused the city to be abandoned.  If it weren't for that the ancient remains would be completely covered with a modern city.  

Efes was the site of one of the other Seven Wonders of the ancient world - the Temple of Artemis.  I always thought it was inside the city and imagined it looking out over the harbor.  In fact it was in a valley on the other side of the mountain from Ephesus - I think that basically nothing remains now.  But it made the city even more prosperous that just the trade since pilgrims came from all over the ancient world to see it.

Efes was also one of the major Christian centers of the Roman world - but we didn't see any remains of churches.  There is a massive walled church (Basilica of St John) outside the city that is named after John the Apostle of Christ.  It was very impressive and completely unexpected.  Unfortunately we didn't get close enough for any good pictures.  

And the house of the Virgin Mary is there, too.  Apparently (according to legend) John left Jerusalem after the cruxifiction.  He went to Ephesus and took Mary, the mother of Jesus with him.  I didn't see it myself, but a large group of Italians who were with our tour left lunch early to visit it.  (In fact, they had been promised this visit by their tour company but it wasn't on the Agenda with the company that actually ran the Tour.  Small miscommunication there!  So there was a small revolt on the bus on the way to Efes with all sorts of Italian drama - you can imagine!  In the end the had something arranged for a small additional fee - but everyone ended happy, I think.)

Anyway, on to Ephesus.

Below is a map of the city.  If you were to draw a diagonal line from the upper left to the lower right corners the period under the line is the portion of the city that is excavated (more or less excavated, that is.)  In other words, not much!

The pictures below are from the long street running from the harbor (long gone) to the Theater.  The Theater is really impressive - it can hold 25,000 people!  And this would have been one of the first things visitors and merchants arriving by sea would have seen.  It must have been a really impressive sight!

Here's a photo from the steps of the Theater looking back down street leading to the harbor.  It would have been lined with shops and offices.  The section to the left in the photo was the Commercial Agora so a definitely bustling place.  Where there are now tress and green grass was the harbor and the Aegean Sea.  Amazing to think that the sea is 6 miles away now.  

This street leads into the unexcavated part of Efes.  On the map above you can see the Stadium in the upper center.  The guide said that really only 25% of the ancient city has been excavated.  There are quite a few unfortunate reconstructions (meaning, lots of concrete used to link bits of columns together) that date from a long time ago when that was the norm (the Parthenon in Athens has a lot of the same kind of work but they're gradually undoing it), but there are some other really interesting remains that are pretty cool.

This is the Library.  Obviously the facade was restored, but it was done very well.  Apparently it was originally a tomb but was completely too ostentatious.  So it was turned into the city's library.  The guide told us that this library was the Roman world's third largest - Alexandria's was the largest and then Pergamon's was the second largest.  Still, being third largest library in the Roman world is pretty impressive.  I wonder why Rome didn't have a large library...?

Anyway, I also think this looks very much like some of the buildings in Petra that I saw last year.  I guess it makes sense - the Greek culture (including architecture) was dominant in the entire area so I guess major buildings would have some similar characteristics.

Here is a picture of the main gate from the square in front of the library into the Commercial Agora.  So the Theater is down a marble-paved street to the left of the edge of the picture.

Here the Library is behind me and I'm looking up the major road leading to the upper city.  On the map it's the road that leads to the bottom center.  It also reminded me of the road into Petra- paved with massive blocks of marble that have over time gotten all jumbled up.  But very impressive.

Here's I'm looking back at the Library from the Temple of Hadrian.

This is the Temple of Hadrian.  He really got around the Roman Empire.  I went to that exhibit at the British Museum in London about him.  There Hadrian's Wall in England.  When I was in Athens one of the major ancient gates of the city was built by him.  Here he had this temple and a massive gate.  In Rome he has his tomb which is now a fortress by the Vatican.  I think Edirne in Turkey started out as Hadrianopolis, but I could be wrong about that.   Anyway, this is a very interesting and well-preserved facade.  I don't know if it managed to survive or if it's been reconstructed (probably reconstructed given the odds) but it's well done and really beautiful.

Here I'm looking back down the street toward the Library.

Now I've made it all the way up the street to the upper city.  It was the government district.  This is how the the main road looks up here.  On one side is a small Odeon (for both plays and for citizen assemblies) and on the other a smaller governmental Agora.  There's not much left of that, but there are a few low walls and fragments of columns. 

This is a door inside the Odeon.

I just liked this photo.  I think this was taken in the Theater.  It's looking out over the ruins of the upper story of the stage.

And I like this photo - I'm not sure why, but I do.

Finally, interesting (but not true) story told to us by the guide.  This is a carving of the goddess Nike (Victory).  He told us that this stone is the inspiration for the Nike Swoosh.  I suppose it's possible - it is Nike and it is a swoosh!  But I looked up Nike Swoosh online and I think the woman who designed it wasn't running around Efes looking for inspiration!  :-)  But it's a good story.

That's it for Efes.  Definitely worth seeing and 2.5 hours is a good amount of time.  I hope they uncover more of the city in the future - it would also be interesting to hike up the mountains to see the view from the tops.  But it's all restricted access right now.  

Oh, and here's one more photo of the sun setting over Gümbet Bay from my hotel.

My Hotel in Bodrum - The Butterfly

Well, I'm in Bodrum now.  Bodrum is on the Aegean coast of Turkey almost to the Mediterranean Sea.  In the Greek period it was called Halikarnassos.

I'm staying at a great little hotel called The Butterfly.  The owners are fantastic, the setting is beautiful and the pool is wonderful.  It's amazingly hot here, but it is August, so what else would you expect?

Here are a few shots of the pool and the terrace.  Most of the pictures I took from the door of my room - I walk out right to the pool and terrace.  I had rented a smaller room but they moved me to this room as a welcome present which was very cool.

Here are two pictures of the terrace from the stairs that go down to the street entrance.  Here te sun was setting so everything has a nice golden glow.  These were taken with my phone camera.

So I mentioned that this used to be the city of Halikarnassos.  This city was famous because it was the site of the Mausoleum, one of the 7 Wonders of the ancient world.  Of course, all remains of that are long gone.  There are many signs pointing to the place where it stood, but all that's there is a bit of earth.  Supposedly there is a museum but I've never found it!

There is the old city theater up on the hill overlooking the harbor - that's used for performances still.  And there's a very cool castle of the Knights of St John guarding the harbor.  There's a picture of that in the last blog post.  Anyway, here are two shots of the old city wall.  It's right across the street from my hotel.

Finally, a photo (also form my phone) of Gümbet Bay which is the bay you see from the hotel.  

Yesterday I went to Ephesus, so my next post will be photos from that trip!

Some Favorite Photos up to This Point....

These are some of my favorite photos from my trip so far that I think haven't made it into the blog.  I'll let them speak for themselves.  

Rose Window in Notre Dame, Paris

Aya Sofya, Istanbul

Harbor and Castle in Bodrum (this is cheating because it is from last October, but I'll be there in a few days, so it's eligible for inclusion....)

Musee du Moyen Age (Musee Cluny), Paris

Petite Trianon, Versailles

The Louvre, Paris

Gandharan sculpture from Indo-Greek kingdom in Bactria.  This is one of my favorite pieces in the world.  It's in the Musee Guimet, Paris 

The Louvre, Paris

Bees in lavender, Bordeaux, France

Bordeaux, France

Bees in the field, Bordeaux, France

St. Emilion, France

Musee du Cluny, Paris

Harlaxton, UK

Harlaxton, UK

Cast of Column of Trajan in V&A Museum, London

Graveyard in Bordeaux

Back entrance to Carthusian church, Bordeaux

Cool Shots from the Istanbul Archeological Museum

Istanbul has an amazing Archaeological Museum complex.  If you think about it, it makes sense.  Constantinople/Istanbul has been at the heart of the Greek, Roman, Near East and Egyptian worlds for over a thousand years.  There are amazing Greek ruins all along the three coasts of Turkey even today - the Aegean, Black and Mediterranean coasts were colonized by the Greeks way back when.  The Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires ruled the entire Near East for a massive amount of time.  So lots of really interesting items made their way to Istanbul and to the Archaeological Museum.

When Spence, Aimee and I were in Paris, Spence and I went to an exhibit at the Louvre called Babylon.  I think there are some photos from then somewhere on this blog.  One of the cool things we saw there were tiles from the Ishtar Gate at Babylon.  The Ishtar Gate was one of the major entrances to Babylon and was built by Nebuchadnezzar.  That means it was built over 2,600 years ago.  Can you imagine these tiles have managed to survive for that long?

Anyway, Spencer will have to correct me, but I think the tiles in Paris were reproductions of the actual tiles from that gate.  Well, I walked into the Museum by Topkapı palace and there were tons of ACTUAL tiles from the Ishtar Gate.  Now that Iraq has been turned upside down by the Americans (us) with so many archaeological treasures destroyed or looted (and so lost probably for every), this may be one of the few places with original tiles.  It's like we've opened Pandora's box there.  Anyway, these tiles were amazingly beautiful....

They also had a lot of really interesting HUGE tombs - I don't know the plural of "sarcophagus"!  Sarcophagi?  Anyway, this one is the most famous - it's called the Alexander Sarcophagus.  The second and third are from another one - don't know the name of it, but it's taller than I am.  So really huge carvings.

This is a bust of the Roman Emperor Hadrian.  I saw a great bust of Hadrian and his lover Antinous at the Greek National Museum in Athens last year.  I also just went to a really interesting exhibit on Hadrian at the British Museum.  It's called Hadrian: Empire and Conflict.  The exhibit talks about the political and military situation during Hadrian's rule as well as his personal life with Antinous.  There was a scale model of Hadrian's villa in Tivoli in the exhibit.  I didn't know it but the villa was really as large as a small village.  I tried to find website with this scale model, but I couldn't find one!  But it was really impressive.  

There is a very good book about Hadrian called the Memoirs of Hadrian.  It's by Marguerite Yourcenar.  Here's a link to it if you'd like to find out more, and also to one more site.  Check it out if you're at all interested in reading a very interesting and thought-provoking book.

Here's the last interesting photo from the Museum.  It's actually very small - less than a foot tall.  It's a small version of the massive statue at the ancient Temple of Diana at Ephesus (or Efes in Turkish.)  Efes is in Turkey on the Aegean coast.  I plan to go there when I visit Bodrum at the end of the week.  Anyway, I think Paul (from the New Testament) preached there.  Anyway, it's pretty amazing.

I forgot about this photo, so this really is the last one.  It's a statue of a governor from the Babylonian Empire at the time of Hammurabi.  Another amazing thing, I think.  Hammurabi was around 1,750 years before Christ.  

This pretty much wrapped up my trip to Istanbul.  I can't wait to go back!