Turkey: Selcuk, Ephesus and Sirince!

I reached Selcuk late in the evening, and decided to walk around town to get a feel of the place.

Raki! I settled down to have my last glass of the Turkish drink, along with some yoghurt.

I visited the Ephesus Museum the next morning. And couldn't resist taking a photo of the busts of these great men.

 Marcus Aurelius

 Socrates

Plato. I wish Aristotle's bust was also there, so I could complete the triumvirate.

Artemis, the Greek Goddess of wild animals, the huntress, the equivalent of the Roman Diana.

This statue seemed oddly complete! It was the suggestion of the complete male form, through nothing but a leg and feet. Observe the bearing of the right foot, the bent knee, and the muscles of the left leg taut, conveying a person caught in mid-action.

Empress Julia Paula, who ruled in the 3rd Century AD. Women rulers werent exactly unknown the world over, at least in civilized countries.

Please don't ask me who this is, or why he is so wrongly proportioned! Maybe the sculptor was high.

Ephesus (Hittite – Apasa) was an ancient Greek city, built in the 10^th Century BC.

This was a place for assembly, where politics would be discussed.

The streets were all paved, with exact stones. The excavations have tried to match the stones and have done a decent job, leaving us to guess what the original would have looked like.

The Nymphaeum Traiani (Fountain House) was donated in 100 AD in honor of Artemis and the Emperor Trajan. Two stories high, with the statue of Trajan overlooking the fountain, presiding over a globe.

These terrace houses were constructed in 1^st Century BC and were approximately 1400 sq.m. The owners must have been part of the city elite.

Hadrian’s Gate would have looked very close to the Tron Recognizer (1982) when it loomed over the residents of Ephesus.

TRON Recognizer from the film TRON (1982)

 Temple of Hadrian

People sat side by side at the public toilet to defecate and wipe their posteriors – forget privacy and the collective stench. Water flowed in canals below the stones, carrying away feces.

 The Library of Celsus was another famous library, well known in the ancient world. Only the entrance has been preserved, after careful excavation and restoration.

Right opposite the library, connected by an underground passage, was a infamous house for women of ill-repute, and their reputed bibliophile patrons.

Cats always fascinate me (as do dogs)! Was this one a descendant of a cat from the 1st Century AD? But then, every cat is!

 I found myself struggling with my 28mm lens equivalent to capture the 25,000 capacity theater!

 Even from a remote distance, I was barely able to capture the size of it. This was close to the harbor of Ephesus, where ships would bring in traders and sailors from different countries.

These are all milestones used to mark distance. Whenever a new king would come to power, people would obligingly erase the old king's name, and carve in the new one's! No sense in throwing out a good milestone.

The Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was just a stone's throw away from my hotel in Selcuk.

A lone pillar is left which has been carefully pieced together. But the remaining ruins and pillars dotting the landscape give some idea of what it would have looked like!

 Isa-bey Mosque constructed during the Ottoman period.

The Basilica of St.John – first there was a mausoleum built around where St. John was believed to have preached till the end of his days. Later there was a Church built by the 4^th Century.

Wild stories have spread as fact. That St.John's body disappeared in a flash of light when he died, and of his assumption to heaven. Still wilder is the thousand year  old myth that he lies sleeping below the ruins, and whenever he breathes, holy dust collects on the altar. Pilgrims had for over a thousand years, got flasks to gather and carry away the dust that could cause miracle cures. Modern man's skepticism has robbed these facts of their solidity, and when I visited, I kept looking in vain for someone to pull out a flask or container.

 My trip to Sirince, a Greek village near Selcuk, was the highlight of my Selcuk visit. Someone told me I could taste locally produced wines, and there were excellent wines in Sirince. It is less than an hour’s travel to Sirince by bus. 

 I was amazed by the reverential treatment given to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. It was here that I learnt of the 1.8 million cross-border migration of the Greeks and Turks after 1923. The scale was only superseded three decades later by the Indo-Pakistan partition.

 Tarihi Mahsene Cider is the name of this historic wine cellar. I felt like a character right out of The Secret of Santa Vittori, a movie about a wine-producing village during WWII.

 Surrounded by thousands of wine bottles of all vintages, sampling endless number of wines till my taste-buds went numb, and buying some!

The village of Sirince seemed to be stuck in time from a century ago, with its stone paved walkways, wines, people lounging around, and an overall atmosphere of nowhere to go, nothing to do but relax permeated everything. 


Sirince was a good way to end my trip in Turkey. Or maybe it was the wine talking!