Ephesus, a buried city

Visited by thousands of tourists every year, Ephesus remains one of those places where fame spoils the visit, leaving a bittersweet taste in your mouth... On one hand the magnificent vestiges of an extraordinary past, the ancient columns of what was the Third Ephesus, on a plateau once on the sea, today more than 6 km away. On the other, the continuous flow of travellers pouring like rivers out of every gap, all photographing like mad nothing but sun-scorched heads, sunglasses and glittering umbrellas, cruise numbers and the like...

But since you can't always choose when to go somewhere, the good fortune is at least to have had the chance to visit it, imagining how it might have been long ago, in the classical era, walking down the majestic slope towards the Library of Celsus, admiring the Temple of Artemis, or sitting on the tiers of the mythical theatre of Ephesus, an impressive ruin of one of the largest ancient theatres in existence, more than 25,000 people, still today the setting for magical nights of modern music. Long abandoned, the Fourth Ephesus arose a few km away, around the time of Artemis, today in ruins... a single wobbling Doric column is left standing, isolated among the green shrubs of the Mediterranean scrub. Despite everything, the tourists and the overwhelming heat that can strike these lands in summer, Ephesus remains a must-see for the lover of classical Greek history, its art and its culture.