Every ancient city had a main street; Ephesus paved its in solid marble. The stretch between the Library of Celsus and the Great Theatre — Marble Street proper — was part of the Sacred Way that circled Mount Pion, walked by processions for Artemis and by everyone else for shopping, business and being seen.
Look down as much as you look up here. The slabs are grooved with the ruts of centuries of wheels; in places you can see where worn stones were flipped over and re-laid, Roman road maintenance being nothing if not economical. Beneath your feet runs a deep drainage channel — on quiet mornings you can hear water moving under the paving, the city’s plumbing still on duty.
The footprint
On a slab towards the theatre end, a carved set of marks has earned the title of the world’s oldest advertisement: a left footprint, a woman’s head, a heart, and a rectangle often read as a purse. The popular decoding — and your guide will give it with the appropriate wink — is directions: if your foot is smaller than this, you are too young; if larger, cross the street where the lady with the money waits. The building it points towards is the famous brothel of Ephesus, whose own story is more complicated and told on its page.
Between the giants
Because Marble Street connects the two most photographed monuments in the city, most visitors treat it as a corridor. Slow down: the colonnade bases carry inscriptions honouring benefactors; the eastern side gives the best angled view of the Library façade; and the junction where Marble Street meets Curetes and the harbour road was, quite literally, the busiest corner in Roman Asia.
