Ephesus still exists, but not as a city. What survives is one of the best-preserved archaeological sites on earth — marble streets you can walk, a library façade two storeys high, a theatre that still seats an audience — standing empty beside the modern Turkish town of Selçuk, in İzmir province, three kilometres away. Nobody has lived inside ancient Ephesus for roughly five hundred years.
Is Ephesus a city today?
No. The ancient city is a protected UNESCO World Heritage site with a ticket gate, not a place with residents, and it has no municipal existence of its own. Modern-day Ephesus, in the sense of the community that inherited it, is Selçuk — a working Turkish town of some 38,000 people, with a Saturday market, a train station, storks on the Byzantine aqueduct, and the Basilica of St John on the hill above it. When people ask where Ephesus would be today, Selçuk is the honest answer.
The reason the city emptied is the most important fact about it: the harbour silted up. Ephesus lived by its port, the river filled the bay century after century, the sea retreated some six kilometres, and the trade — then the people — went elsewhere. Our page on the ancient port follows that slow disaster in full.
Is Ephesus in Greece or Turkey?
Türkiye. The confusion is understandable and almost entirely historical: Ephesus was founded by Greek colonists, spoke Greek for most of two thousand years, and appears in every Greek and Roman history book — but the land has been Turkish since the fourteenth century, and the modern Republic of Türkiye has governed it since 1923. The nearest Greek territory is the island of Samos, visible on a clear day from the hills near Kuşadası and about two hours away by ferry and road.
Nor is it in Europe. Ephesus sits in Asia — specifically Asia Minor, or Anatolia, the peninsula that forms the Asian side of Türkiye. In Roman terms it was the capital of the province of Asia, which is where that name entered the language. Istanbul straddles the Europe–Asia line; Ephesus is comfortably on the Asian side of it.
The distances that matter
From the Kuşadası cruise port: 19 km — about 25 minutes. From İzmir city or its Adnan Menderes Airport (ADB): 80 km / 45–60 minutes on good motorway. From Selçuk town: 3 km — you can taxi in five minutes; sidewalk-walking is possible off-season. From Bodrum: about 2.5 hours; Marmaris or Denizli/Pamukkale: about 3. From Istanbul: 550 km — a one-hour flight or a very long story; our fly-in day tour handles it properly.
Ways to arrive
By air: İzmir ADB, then transfer or rental — the standard route. By cruise: Kuşadası (occasionally İzmir Alsancak), the easiest great port day in the Mediterranean. By rail: a pleasant regional train links İzmir Basmane to Selçuk in about 80 minutes — cheap, scenic, timetable-shaped. By road: intercity buses reach Selçuk from everywhere in Türkiye; the motorway network is excellent. By tour: our door-to-door days from İzmir, Kuşadası and beyond remove all logistics — which is, we admit cheerfully, the point of them.
One nuance worth knowing: the ruins’ location is itself historical evidence. The city once sat on the sea; the coast is now 6 km west because the river filled the bay — the whole story is on our ancient port page, and it explains why “where is Ephesus?” has had several correct answers across three millennia.
