Ephesus - where the streets are paved in white marble

Great was my anticipation to see Ephesus; greater yet was the experience.

We left our Empress Zoe hotel room just before 6 am this morning, having arisen even before the first call to prayer, which today was at 5:30, and flew on Atlas Jet airlines from Istanbul to Izmir (ancient name Smyrna) in the Asian part of Turkey. From Izmir we shuttled to Selcuk where we jumped into a van with a young couple from Japan, a driver, and our guide for the day, Fazola.

Fazola is very knowledgable in history, architecture, archeology and botany and he made a wonderful day for us seeing the sights in and around Ephesus. We started with the House of the Virgin Mary (where it is said Mary lived in hiding after the death and resurrection of Jesus). She is said to have lived here until her death, all the while being cared for, as Jesus directed from the cross, in the protection of the apostle John. The reconstructed stone house, reclaimed from beneath the surface after several earthquakes struck the area, is set on a beautiful mountain-top perch amidst olive trees, palm trees, fruit trees, and singing finches, with views toward the Aegean sea.

Next we walked through the ruins of Ephesus where 150 years of excavations have surfaced many parts of this Aegean port city that was populated by 500,000 during the time of Christ and stood at the politically and economically vital crossroads between Europe and Asia.

Highlights of our time in Ephesus include (pictured below) a depiction of the goddess Nike that once adorned the Heracles Gate in the ancient city (see how the flow of her dress as she speeds along inspired the Nike swoosh), the library, which during its prime held over 12,000 scrolls and was the third largest library in the world, and, of course, the amphitheater where Paul preached.

Cleopatra and Mark Antony honey-mooned in Ephesus, but I am far more interested in the history of the city relating to the spread of Christianity and the interactions of the apostle Paul in this culture full of pagan temples, myths, and images. Paul preached against idol worship for which he was imprisoned nearby on a small mountain, which Fazola pointed out in the distance as we stood in the amphitheater. The city of Ephesus is slowly being excavated and reconstructed by archeological teams. Fazola says if we could just come back in 200-300 years we could see the city returned to the way it looked while Paul was living here.

After a lunch break, we went to the ruins of the Temple of Artemis, then a 16C mosque, and, lastly a rural cooperative where handmade silk carpets were being produced. We saw how silk is harvested from the cocoons of silk worms, how the silk is colored and then woven into carpets. The process is unbelievably slow: we saw one woman weaving a complex design that will take 14 months to complete. The craftswomen count their stitches to get the carpet designs perfect. The result is stunning and as we sipped Turkish tea we had many rugs, many designs unfurled with great drama on the floor before us. After the carpets had been unrolled and tossed (like flying carpets through the air) to show off the shine of the silk nap, it may have been slightly disappointing to the men putting on this show that we were not potential buyers for the $2000 cotton or $14,000 silk carpets.