An Ephesus city tour walks one route: in at the Upper Gate on the hill, downhill along the marble main street, out past the Great Theatre at the bottom — about 3 kilometres and 2.5 unhurried hours, or 3.5 with the Terrace Houses. Everything famous in Ephesus stands on that line or a few steps off it. Below is every stop in the order you actually meet them.
The route in one paragraph
From the Upper (Magnesia) Gate the order is: the Odeon, the State Agora, the Prytaneion with the city’s eternal flame, the Temple of Domitian, the Hercules Gate, then the long descent of Curetes Street past the Trajan Fountain, the Temple of Hadrian, the Scholastica Baths and the public latrines, with the Terrace Houses entered halfway down on the left. The street ends at the Library of Celsus and the Mazaeus and Mithridates Gate into the Commercial Agora. Turning right along Marble Street brings you past the famous carved footprint to the Great Theatre, which seated 25,000, and out along the Arcadian Street towards the vanished harbour. The Temple of Artemis, the Basilica of St John and the Ephesus Museum stand outside the gates, a few minutes away by road.
The 17 stops, in walking order
- Odeon — a roofed marble half-moon for 1,500 people: city council by day, concerts by night. Ten minutes here explains how Ephesus governed itself.
- State Agora — the civic square the Odeon looks onto, once ringed by colonnades and public offices.
- Prytaneion (Town Hall) — home of the city’s eternal flame, and the spot where the two great Artemis statues were found buried intact in 1956.
- Memmius Monument — a first-century BC family monument at the corner where the street begins to fall away.
- Temple of Domitian — Ephesus’ first imperial temple, built for an emperor Rome later tried to erase from memory.
- Hercules Gate — two pillars carved with the lion-skinned hero, planted mid-street to stop carts. Antiquity’s most heroic traffic bollard.
- Curetes Street — the great marble descent, colonnaded, mosaic-paved and lined with shops and fountains.
- Trajan Fountain — a two-storey public fountain where citizens filled jugs under a colossal statue of the emperor, one foot resting on a globe.
- Temple of Hadrian — the prettiest façade in the city: Tyche over the outer arch, Medusa over the inner door, and the city’s founding legend carved along the frieze.
- Terrace Houses (separate ticket — take it) — six houses of the Roman rich with their frescoes, mosaics, marble halls and underfloor heating still in place.
- Scholastica Baths & the public latrines — the leisure quarter: hot rooms, cold plunge, and the marble multi-seat toilets everybody photographs.
- Library of Celsus — 12,000 scrolls, a founder buried beneath the reading-room floor, and a façade deliberately built to trick the eye into seeing a bigger building.
- Mazaeus & Mithridates Gate — the grandest doorway in Ephesus, paid for by two former slaves in thanks for their freedom.
- Commercial Agora — a market square 110 metres a side, stocked by the harbour, where the wealth of Roman Asia changed hands.
- Marble Street — chariot ruts, a drain you can still hear running, and the carved footprint called the world’s oldest advertisement.
- Great Theatre — 25,000 seats cut into the hillside, and the scene of the silversmiths’ riot in Acts 19. Climb a third of the way up for the view.
- Arcadian (Harbour) Street — the colonnaded avenue that once ran to the docks and was lit by oil lamps at night. It now ends in a field: the harbour silted up, and that is why the city died.
Three stops just outside the gates
- Temple of Artemis — one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, now a single re-erected column in a marsh, ten minutes away and free to visit.
- Basilica of St John — Justinian’s vast church on Ayasuluk Hill, built over the tomb traditionally held to be the Evangelist’s.
- Ephesus Museum, Selçuk — where the finds live, including both great statues of Artemis Ephesia. Ruins first, museum after: everything means more in that order.
Many visitors also add the House of the Virgin Mary in the hills above the site, and the newer Ephesus Experience Museum beside the ruins. Our guide to how long to spend at Ephesus sets out what fits in half a day, a full day and two days.
What the route costs and when to walk it
The ancient city takes one ticket and the Terrace Houses a second; both are set by the Ministry of Culture and change most Januaries, so we keep the current figures on a single tickets and opening hours page rather than scattering numbers that go stale. Gates open early and close late in summer, early in winter. In July and August the marble radiates heat by mid-morning — walk at opening or after 15:00, which is also when the cruise coaches thin out.
