THURSDAY OCTOBER 8th, 2015 – Kusadasi (Ephesus), Turkey
Rob was really excited about seeing the Ancient City of Ephesus! I guess ALL Architecture students study it! Many of the forms and iconic shapes found there are still in common use today.
In fact the column in our Belles Firm of Architecture Logo is an Ionic Column Capital first seen at Ephesus!
After breakfast we headed out to find a Cab to take us up to Ephesus Park. We had an idea of what we expected to pay…. It was just a 30 minute ride to and from and we had read that a round trip cab fare could be as much as $65.00. We were hoping to find another couple to pile in and split with. We searched our way out of the cab area with no luck then stumbled on an older lady looking to share as well… We explained to the cab driver that we were wanting to split the fare, asked if he knew of yet a forth person… he did not but agreed to lower the fare to $15.00 pp! BAM – exactly what we had in mind! So we jumped in and were on our way. It was only a 25 minute ride to the high side of Ephesus Park where he let us out (without collecting any money). He told us we had ONE hour to go through the park and that he would meet us at the low side, where we would exit…. OK….
We were dropped at the main entrance that was surrounded by mobil vendor boxes, like from a traveling fair or circus. We resisted the temptation to shop and headed strait for the gate. Rob got tickets while Lynn used the bathroom – even buying extra tickets to see the “Terrace Houses” a special exhibit within the complex. As we passed through the gates we were bombarded with tour guides offering to escort us through… We usually don’t do that just so we can take our sweet time and do as we please, and this day was no different, other than the regret we felt later on as we tried to decipher the signs and figure out what we were looking at!
The place is HUGE! There is rubble everywhere – and in some cases it has been “restored” if you can call stacking up the rubble any old way with mortar in between a restoration….. If you study the signs you can tell what was once there, but most people don’t have the ability to envision things that well, at least not in a three dimensional sense from looking at a floor plan and a bunch of rubble. We even got tired of it after a while and just decided to enjoy what we saw without a complete understanding of it. It was fun to find our icon capital here and there!
We must have taken 1000 photos on this day – so I decided to just do this post as a pictorial. I will do my best to organize the images from beginning to end and identify the things or areas that I do know….
Ephesus is the best preserved classical city of the Eastern Mediterranean, and among the best places in the world experience the atmosphere of Roman Times. It was built in the 10th century BC by Greek colonists. The city flourished after it came under the control of the Roman Republic in 129 BC. According to estimates, Ephesus had a population of 33,600 to 56,000 people in the Roman period, people just like you and me! Wait until you see the pictures of the Terrace Houses where the “rich people” lived!
We started out trying to envision it as it had been – by studying the boards with floor plans etc…. But it is way too big – too much to comprehend – it was all we could do to try to imagine 40,000 people living in the city of Ephesus! The marble roads are forever etched in my mind, what seemed like miles of them. To think the taxi driver thought that we should get through in an hour….. I guess we didn’t tell him we were Architects! When we exited the park we hailed just any old cab and headed back to the port of Kusadasi and the Azamara Journey Ship!
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