Explore Selçuk

The Ephesus Archaeological Museum in the centre of Selçuk shows finds from Ephesus and the area around it, arranged by find site. Its halls hold objects from the Terrace Houses and the city's fountains, coins, two marble statues of Ephesian Artemis, the Resting Warrior statue, imperial portraits, and finds from the Temple of Artemis and Ayasuluk Hill.

The Basilica of St. John on Ayasuluk Hill in Selçuk was built by Emperor Justinian in the 6th century over the grave held to be that of John the Apostle. The domed church was one of the largest of its time; visitors walk among its partly rebuilt brick and marble walls, columns, the tomb at the centre and the baptistery, below the walls of Ayasuluk Castle.

The İsa Bey Mosque at the foot of Ayasuluk Hill in Selçuk was built in 1374–75 for the Aydınid ruler İsa Bey by the Damascene architect Ali ibn Mushaimish. Its marble west façade, colonnaded courtyard and two tiled domes follow the Great Mosque of Damascus; it is a working mosque, so visitors avoid prayer times and dress modestly.

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, stood on the plain at the edge of today's Selçuk. The marble temple begun around 550 BC was burned in 356 BC and rebuilt, then quarried away after antiquity; today one column re-erected from fragments rises above the foundations in marshy ground.

Ayasuluk Castle crowns the hill above Selçuk, a site settled since the Neolithic. Its crenellated walls and towers were raised by the Byzantines and rebuilt under the Aydınids and Ottomans; inside the partly restored circuit are cisterns, a small mosque and the remains of a bath and palace. It is reached through the Basilica of St. John on the same ticket.

Ephesus is the excavated site of a Greek and Roman city 3 km from Selçuk that served as capital of the Roman province of Asia. A marble street leads past the Library of Celsus, built in the 2nd century AD, to the Great Theatre cut into Mount Panayır; the Terrace Houses, Roman homes with wall paintings and mosaics under a protective roof, need a separate ticket.

The House of the Virgin Mary is a small stone chapel on Bülbüldağı above Ephesus, venerated by Catholics, and also by Muslims, as the place where Mary spent her last years. Lazarist priests identified it in 1891 following the visions of the nun Anne Catherine Emmerich; Mass is said here every morning, and visitors pass the chapel, the springs and the wall of prayer notes.