The best-preserved classical city in the eastern Mediterranean
Ephesus was one of the great cities of the Roman province of Asia, and walking its marble-paved Curetes Street past fountains, temples and terraced houses gives a rare sense of an ancient city in full. The two-storey façade of the Library of Celsus is the showpiece, and the Great Theatre once held around 25,000 people. Nearby Selçuk has the lone column of the Temple of Artemis and the Basilica of St John, and the hill village of Şirince makes a good lunch stop.