An Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir starts on the road, with no flight needed. This route reaches Ephesus on day one, sleeps in Selcuk, then drives inland to Aphrodisias. For island trips, open Greece Tours on the homepage.
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Which road and valley lead south on an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir?
The O-31 motorway leaves the Izmir Beltway and runs south towards the plain of the Kucuk Menderes. The Belevi exit for Selcuk comes an hour or a little more after an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir starts.
This route starts in a city that surrounds the end of the Gulf of Izmir. The gulf is 64 kilometres long and 32 kilometres wide, and its deepest point reaches 100 metres. Seventeen rivers empty into it, among them the Gediz and the Meles. Leaving that water behind is the first step of an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir.
Want more of the country? Turkey tours on the homepage add Cappadocia, Pamukkale and Istanbul.
East of the city lies an alluvial plain, made by small streams. In the south the ground turns slightly more rugged. To the north the city spreads across the delta of the Gediz. The earliest settlement able to watch the whole gulf stood on Mount Yamanlar, north-east of the inner bay.
One hill in the city shows how the coast has changed. Old Smyrna stood on a rise that was once a small peninsula, joined to the mainland by a small isthmus. Further south, at the mouth of the river near Selcuk, silt pushed the coastline out to sea.
The motorway carries the number O-31 and the name Izmir-Denizli Motorway. It begins at a trumpet interchange with the Izmir Beltway. From there it runs south for 258 kilometres and ends at Denizli. The exit for Selcuk lies on its first stretch, far short of Denizli. An Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir heads south along the same corridor.
Torbali is a district of Izmir Province. A connector 4 kilometres long joins the O-31 to the D.550 just north of the town. Menderes, another district, lies 20 kilometres from the city. Around Gumuldur it grows satsuma tangerines. The ruins of Colophon, Claros and Notion lie along the road between Menderes and Selcuk.
The river of this valley is the Kucuk Menderes, known in antiquity as the Cayster or Kaystros. It runs westward and meets the Aegean Sea at Pamucak beach near Selcuk. On the way south, an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir keeps to the lower plain of this river.
The plain that the river waters holds Torbali, Selcuk, Odemis, Tire, Bayindir, Kiraz and Beydag. Vegetables and fruit grow on the plain, and olives are farmed on the foothills. Odemis, 113 kilometres south-east of Izmir, is known for its potatoes. In spring, lakes form in the river delta near the sea.
A village called Belevi lies beside the highway from Izmir to Aydin. A tomb of the Hellenistic period stands there, the Belevi Mausoleum. It is the second largest mausoleum in Anatolia, and its builders never finished the work. Its site lies beside the road that an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir follows towards Selcuk.
Exit K3, called Belevi, is the last exit inside Izmir Province and joins the D.550 towards Selcuk. The town of Selcuk lies 2 kilometres north-east of the ancient city of Ephesus. Pamucak beach, 12 kilometres long, lies on the same coast. This town holds the single night of an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir.
What do the gladiator graves of Ephesus tell an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir?
Gladiator fights at Ephesus followed fixed rules, and the graves show it. The skeletons carry wounds from one weapon type per bout, and a tomb relief shows a referee beside the fighters. For an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir, these finds belong to day one.
Archaeologists found the gladiator cemetery along the old road that led from the city centre towards the Temple of Artemis. Tomb reliefs of gladiators marked the graves. More than 60 young fighters lay together in one plot. These graves lie in the Roman city that an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir covers in a single day.
Doctors from Vienna examined 67 skeletons from the cemetery to learn how each man died. Injuries on the front of the skulls point to duels in which each opponent used just one type of weapon. The doctors found no mutilation of the bodies, which fits a fight under set rules.
Healed bone on the skulls shows that fighters lived through earlier injuries. Among the men studied were fighters who had survived multiple blows to the head before the last one. The share of wounds to the skull surprised the research team, because the helmets of the fighters covered the head.
Ten skulls carry a square hole in the side of the head. The researchers link these marks to a hammer-like tool. Helmets covered that part of the head, so the team places the blows after the fight. All fighter types but one wore a helmet.
The tombstones of Ephesus show gladiators and carry inscriptions that name them. Carved helmets, tridents and victory wreaths decorate them. One marble relief shows two fighters in armour stepping towards each other. Their names, Asteropaios and Drakon, are cut on a raised band. These stones give an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir names to set beside the bones.
A relief from the graveyard shows two types of fighter with a referee beside them. The gear of each type gave the opposite advantage. The retiarius, bareheaded and armoured only on the left arm and shoulder, carried a net, a trident and a dagger. The secutor wore a helmet and heavier armour.
Fights appear on walls too. Wall art in the hillside houses of Ephesus includes depictions of gladiators, caricatures and animals. Graffiti there give personal names, poems and declarations of love. Such writing gives a view of daily life at the time. These walls show an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir that the arena reached into the homes of the city.
Officials called asiarchs organised the public games of the province and paid for them from their own funds. The games honoured the gods and the Roman emperors. Ephesus was one of the cities where asiarchs were based. Inscriptions about the games survive at Ephesus, where an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir spends its first day.
Historians connect the cemetery to a gladiator school in the city, called a ludus. Tests on the carbon, nitrogen and sulphur in the bone collagen show a mainly vegetarian diet of grain. Writers of the time called gladiators hordearii, which means barley eaters. The graveyard finds and the reliefs are displayed in the Ephesus Museum in Selcuk.
Which gymnasium, stadium and city gate edge Ephesus in an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir?
On an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir, three outer buildings frame the ruins of Ephesus. The Vedius Gymnasium lies in the north. The stadium sits just south of it, and the Magnesian Gate stands in the south-east of the old city wall.
Publius Vedius Antoninus, a wealthy Ephesian, paid for the Vedius Gymnasium in the middle of the second century. The complex was dedicated to the emperor Antoninus Pius. It stands in the north of the city and counts as one of the four large bath-gymnasiums of Ephesus. The ruin is among the well-preserved buildings of Ephesus.
A palaestra, the courtyard for wrestling and other sports, lay on the east side of the complex. A monumental gateway opened on the south side. The largest room, an exercise hall, ran along the eastern edge. An Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir reads these parts as the training ground of the complex.
The central room of the baths held the cold pool, and the warm room lay to its west. Furnaces in the basement heated the hot room through floor channels and hollow bricks. A statue of a river god once decorated the cold pool hall. That statue is kept in the Izmir Archaeological Museum.
The building had a long working life. Builders reworked it in the first quarter of the fifth century. Bath use ended at the close of that century, and the furnishings were stripped early in the sixth. Traces of later use run to the eighth century. An Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir meets a ruin with layers of use.
The stadium lies just south of the Vedius Gymnasium, in a hollow beside Pion hill. On an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir, its U-shaped plan is the first thing to read. Seats on the south side rested on the hill slope, and seats on the north side sat on vaulted substructures. Its first form, from Hellenistic times, had earthen banks.
In the reign of Nero, in the middle of the first century, builders enlarged and rebuilt the stadium. A wealthy citizen named C. Stertinius Orpex paid for the work with his wife and daughter. Private money paid for both the stadium and the gymnasium. An Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir finds the same kind of donor behind each building.
In early Christian times the stone seats were taken down. Their blocks went into ramparts on Ayasuluk Hill. From the fifth century the track fell out of use and became farmland. None of the seating tiers was kept in place, so the shape of the ground tells the story.
The Magnesian Gate stands in the south-east of the old city walls. It is named after Magnesia on the Maeander, the city to which its road led. The road began at this gate. Two rectangular towers guarded the entrance, and the main gateway was 3.7 metres wide.
A narrow courtyard with high walls lay behind the gateway, and an enemy who broke through had to cross it. Researchers call an early Hellenistic date for the first gate probable, though the dating is not settled. Under Vespasian, in the later first century, builders turned it into an arched ceremonial gate with three entrances.
Beside the gate, just inside the walls, lie the remains of the East Gymnasium. It dates to the second century and combined a gymnasium with baths. Its statues of Asclepius, Hygeia, Pan and Dionysus are in the same Izmir museum. An Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir meets a Hellenistic wall and a Roman gymnasium side by side.
What do Mount Pion and the Seven Sleepers add to an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir?
Mount Pion holds the cave of the Seven Sleepers. The neighbouring hill carries a wall of Lysimachus at least 9 kilometres long. Together they give an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir a shared religious tradition and a piece of ancient defence.
Ancient writers called the hill Mount Pion, and the Turkish name is Panayir. It also carries a second ancient name, Mount Coelian. The hill is one of two that frame the old city. The opening stretch of an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir therefore sits on a valley floor below two hills.
Bulbul is the other hill. King Lysimachus built a city wall along its ridge in the third century BC. The wall enclosed the Hellenistic city that day one of this route visits. It measured at least 9 kilometres, with watchtowers along it. More than 3 kilometres of it are very well preserved on Bulbul.
Ephesus buried its dead outside the Hellenistic city walls. Burial inside the city was rare, and a city granted it only as a mark of high distinction. Tombs lay on uninhabited slopes or beside major roads. Mount Pion has one such burial slope, around the Seven Sleepers cave.
The Cave of the Seven Sleepers lies on the slopes of Mount Pion, near Ephesus. Builders raised a religious site over the grotto. An early Christian catacomb in that area became tied to the legend. Pilgrims came to it in large numbers.
Archaeologists excavated the grotto in the twentieth century and uncovered the ruins of that religious site. Hundreds of graves from the fifth and sixth centuries came out of the ground. Inscriptions dedicated to the Seven Sleepers were found on the walls and in the graves.
Christian tradition ties the cave to the third century and the Roman emperor Decius. That gives an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir a story from that age. Seven young men were accused of following Christianity. The emperor ordered the mouth of their cave sealed.
Another page that includes Aphrodisias is Ephesus Aphrodisias Pamukkale Tour From Izmir.
In the same tradition, a landowner later opened the sealed cave and planned to use it as a cattle pen. The young men woke and believed they had slept for one day. A bishop interviewed them, and they died praising God. Retellers disagree on the length of the sleep: one gives 373 years, another 196.
Islam tells the story too, so an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir touches two faiths at this hill. The chapter called al-Kahf, meaning the Cave, is the eighteenth of the Quran. It says the young men included a dog, which Islamic tradition names Qitmir. The text does not give the exact number of sleepers.
The same chapter speaks of 300 years and nine added. It adds that God has the fuller knowledge of how long they remained. One reading takes the nine added years as the gap between the solar and the lunar calendar.
More than one place claims to be the cave of the legend. None has been proven as the original site. The grotto at Ephesus is therefore a place of tradition and burial history. It adds that layer to an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir without settling where the sleepers lay.
More about Aphrodisias: Ephesus Aphrodisias Tour From Istanbul.
What does the city of Aydin give the second day of an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir?
Day two of this Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir runs by Aydin, a city in the lower Buyuk Menderes valley. The ancient city of Tralleis lies within it. A museum keeps the finds of the region, and the province is known for figs and olive oil.
Aydin is the capital of its province and the urban core of the Efeler district. The city lies in the lower part of the Buyuk Menderes valley. From that spot it commands the land between the upland valley and the Aegean coast. The name is Turkish and means enlightened, and the Aydinid dynasty gave it to the city.
Before it received its Turkish name, the city was known as Tralleis, and as Tralles in Latin. Strabo, the ancient geographer, says Argives and Trallians founded it. In antiquity it ranked among the largest cities of the Aegean region. Strabo also calls it a prosperous trading centre. Its ruins lie within modern Aydin.
An earthquake struck Tralleis in 26 BC and damaged it greatly. Augustus provided funds for the rebuilding. The citizens thanked him by renaming their city Caesarea. That rebuilding belongs to the past of the city an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir meets on day two.
Roman ruins of Tralleis include a gymnasium and a theatre. The bath-gymnasium complex stands out among its structures, and people popularly call it the three-eyes. The ancient city also held an acropolis, a necropolis, a stadium, a temple and a church. A Byzantine tower and fortifications rise above the town.
A stone pillar from Tralleis carries the Seikilos epitaph. It preserves the oldest complete piece of music that survives, with its notation. The short song is about enjoying life while it lasts. The pillar is kept in the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, far from the valley where it was found.
Ephesus also features in Sardis and Ephesus Tour From Izmir.
The city offers an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir a local museum for the region’s digs. The Aydin Archaeological Museum draws its displays mainly from Tralleis, Magnesia, Alabanda and Nysa. Finds from the Archaic Panionium and the Tepecik Tumulus join them. It holds around 11,000 archaeological objects, around 4,000 ethnographic objects and 45,000 coins.
The Tralles Hall shows Hellenistic and Roman sculpture, including small painted terracotta figures of Eros and a decorated cremation urn. A separate hall holds Roman mosaics from Orthosia. A stone hall shows sarcophagi and a statue of Pan. The coin section runs from Lydia to the Ottoman period.
Aydin province is known above all for figs. Ripe figs do not travel or keep well, so growers sell them dried or processed. The province supplies dried figs, mainly of the Sarilop type. The road inland takes an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir into that fig province.
Sarilop is a Smyrna type, so growers need caprification for the fruit to set. The fig wasp carries pollen from caprifig trees to the fruit. Fresh figs are harvested at the end of July and the start of August. Figs grown for drying fall from the tree, dry naturally in the sun, and are then sorted and packed.
Ephesus Aphrodisias Tour From Ankara covers Aphrodisias too.
Figs and olive oil are traditional crops here. The European Union protects the name Aydin Memecik olive oil. It is a natural extra virgin oil from Memecik olives grown in the province. That variety makes up 75 per cent of Aydin’s olives. Both crops grow in the province that this Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir crosses on day two.
How does Nazilli fit along the road on an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir?
Nazilli is the second-largest town of Aydin Province. This Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir passes through it on day two. The town stands on the highway between Aydin and Denizli. Karacasu, the district that holds Aphrodisias, lies to its south-east.
Nazilli is both a district and a municipality of Aydin Province, and the district covers 691 square kilometres. Sultanhisar borders it on the west, Bozdogan on the south and Kuyucak on the east. The Menderes River crosses the district and waters the plain around the town.
The name points to a market. Nazilli looks like a later form of Pazarkoy, a Turkish name that means market village. At the end of the fourteenth century the Ottoman ruler Bayezid I took the area. The town then held two villages, Cuma Yeri and Pazarkoy. A legend adds that a governor’s son named it after a woman he loved.
The railway made the district fill with people quickly. Its station stands on the line from Izmir to Aydin, the first railway in Turkey. The same line runs on to Denizli. Railway car workshops were located in Nazilli. After the night in Selcuk, an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir enters the district this line serves.
For more on Ephesus, see Ephesus Pamukkale Tour From Izmir.
Census figures show the growth. The count of the late nineteen-twenties found 49,872 people in the district. Of them, 9,325 lived in the town itself. The count of the year two thousand found 145,963 people, with 105,665 in the town and 40,298 in the villages. An Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir meets that town on the Denizli highway.
Printed cloth shaped the town in the nineteen-thirties. Ataturk himself opened Turkey’s first state-founded print-cloth factory here on 9 October. Building took 18 months. The plan called for 20 million metres of printed cloth a year. An Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir passes a town that this factory helped to develop.
The factory later lost ground. Its machines grew old, and it struggled to compete once it was privatised. It closed in the early two-thousands, and its grounds passed to the local university. Over its years, more than 19,000 employees retired from it. The municipal ethnography museum took in 74 fabrics from the print room.
Farming feeds the district. Cotton, alfalfa and corn are the main crops of the Nazilli plain. The district also stands out for its vegetables and fruit. The mountain villages above the plain are known for chestnuts. An Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir crosses this farmland on its second day.
Two ancient cities lie inside the Nazilli district, away from the route of an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir. Mastaura stands near the Dereagzi quarter, at the foot of Mount Messogis. Its Roman amphitheatre, from about the year two hundred, still stands to a good height. The city also minted coins.
Aphrodisias comes up again in Ephesus Aphrodisias Pamukkale Tour by Flight From Ankara.
Harpasa, the second city, lay on the east bank of the Harpasus, a tributary of the Meander. Ancient writers such as Pliny the Elder mention it. The ruined castle of Arpaz stands on its site.
Summers here are hot. The mean daily high in July and August is 37.0 degrees Celsius. Rain totals 603 millimetres in a year and falls mainly in winter.
Why does the ancient city of Nysa lie near an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir?
Nysa lies beside the Aydin to Denizli highway, near the inland road of an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir. This route makes no stop there. Its ruins hold a theatre, a library and a council hall, split by a deep gorge.
The ruins stand in the Sultanhisar district of Aydin Province, about three kilometres north-west of Sultanhisar itself. On day two, an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir follows the road inland by Aydin and Nazilli. Nysa lies near that road. On this route the ancient city is a neighbour of the road, not a stop.
Nysa belongs to the Hellenistic period. Antiochus I Soter founded it in the first half of the third century BC. An older town called Athymbra stood on the spot. The name honours Nysa, one of the wives of Antiochus. Strabo and the historian Stephanos are the sources for the foundation story.
Strabo called Nysa a double city. A torrential stream ran through a deep gorge in the middle of it. Streets, squares and buildings stood on both slopes, held up by vaulted substructures. Bridges joined the two halves. The gymnasium lies on the west side of the flood bed that once divided the town.
A related page on Ephesus: Ephesus Chios Tour From Izmir.
The theatre stands on the eastern slope in the middle of the city and is well preserved. Roman builders raised it in the imperial period. Its horseshoe-shaped seating holds up to about 12,000 people. Reliefs decorate the stage building. All of this lies close to the road of an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir.
The library lies in the northern part of the city and has two floors. It dates to the second century. Among ancient libraries in Anatolia, only one stands in better condition. The hall measures about 25 metres by 14 metres.
Nysa was also a place of study. Strabo wrote that, as a youth, he attended the lectures of Aristodemus there. He took the full course while that teacher was very old. For anyone who reads about an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir, this links the ruins to the geographer himself.
The bouleuterion, or council hall, stands on the east side of the flood bed. Strabo called it the Gerontikon, the house of the council of elders. Its seats curve in a half circle, in 12 rows split into four blocks. It held 600 to 700 people. Later builders turned it into an odeon.
The stream runs through a vaulted passage called the Nysa Bridge, a tunnel-like substructure about 100 metres long. It ranks second among works of its kind from antiquity. Strabo wrote of an amphitheatre in the gorge, with a hidden underground passage for the flood waters. An Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir skirts this vault without entering it.
Readers interested in Aphrodisias can open Pamukkale Aphrodisias and Ephesus Tour From Istanbul.
Strabo placed the Plutonion at Acharaca. He described a costly sacred precinct there, with a shrine of Pluto and Kore and the Charonium cave. The sick lived in the village near the cave, among priests who guided cures by dreams. That sanctuary belongs to Nysa, not to the stops of an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir.
The sacred road to Acharaca leaves Nysa towards the west. The necropolis of the city lies beside that road, about two kilometres from the ruins. The site of Acharaca is the settlement of Salavatli.
How did the carvers of Aphrodisias work in marble, as an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir shows?
Carvers at Aphrodisias blocked a statue out with the point, then shaped it with chisels. They drilled hair and folds and polished late portraits. An Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir reaches their site on day two.
Excavators found a sculptor’s workshop in two rooms of a small stoa, a covered walkway lined with columns. It stood north of the council house, with an open yard south of the rooms. The workshop lay within the site that an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir walks through.
The dig lifted a set of stone-carving tools from the rooms. It also found about 25 well-preserved statues, portraits and mythological figures among them, plus 325 fragments. Practice pieces carved by apprentices lay with them. An unfinished portrait in the main room wears late-antique dress, so the shop was still busy around the year 400.
An unfinished Artemis from the site of an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir shows the order of work. Point marks show the carver roughed the figure out first. Flat chisels then shaped the clothing in rough form. Work moved from the front of the block to the back. No fine chiselling or drilling followed.
Ephesus Samos Tour From Izmir covers Ephesus too.
Roman carvers, at Aphrodisias above all, first set a figure out in two dimensions. They cut it in three afterwards. An unfinished athlete is hard to classify. The stone does not show whether a high relief or a free-standing figure was meant. Drill holes in its hair and ear show a high level of finish.
The relief panels of the Sebasteion show more tools. Tooth chisels shaped the rough forms, and flat and round-headed chisels refined them. Drills cut the deep folds and curls. A channelling tool followed, to finish the narrow, deep folds of the cloth. Such marks set out the carvers’ steps for anyone on an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir.
Portraits from the late fourth and early fifth centuries show high levels of surface polish. The relief panels got no single standard finish. Carvers left rough work on the backs of blocks and on hidden edges, out of sight from the ground.
A statue of a man in armour was cut from at least six pieces of stone. Both arms, parts of the helmet and cloak, and the portrait head were carved apart and fixed on. A metal dowel sat in a hole in one arm, and a clamp bridged the join to the torso.
Ephesus also features in Izmir Ephesus Tour By Flight From Istanbul.
Joining pieces like this was common in the Hellenistic and early Roman imperial periods. It grew rarer after the middle of the first century. A smaller robed statue had a hand made as a separate piece and held by a metal pin. The socket for the pin survives.
One finished relief figure has a square hole above the shoulder. A matching hole in the back was cut for lifting it into the building with a crane. Another large relief was cut from a block with serious flaws, and its breaks follow the fault lines.
Trade carried this work away from the ruins that an Ephesus Aphrodisias tour from Izmir crosses. The excavators’ study of the marble trade points to long-distance sales of costly finished pieces. It points to regional sales of larger products such as statues and sarcophagi. One moulded statue base carries its maker’s signature.