The houses are all enclosed in giant plexiglass structures so the elements don't disrupt the excavation process.
Like the rest of the city, these Roman houses were very well-preserved because most of the city was buried between two mountains as rockslides and dust settle over everything. These were houses of very wealthy traders so there are baths and several rooms. The paintings on the walls are very common in most houses like this.
The images have been meticulously unearthed but they're all original. No artificial restoration of paint.
By far, the most impressive artwork in the houses were the mosaics that were a part of almost every square inch of floor. They seem like the original tenants just moved out. I've flipped many of the images so you can get a better view of the figures.
I think this is an image of Dionysus, the wine god.
Intricate mosaic tile on a hallway leading to a bath.
Note, the same terracotta plumbing set into the wall.
Poseidon in your bathroom. That's livin!
Austrians have been funding most of these excavations since the late 1800's. I wanted to inclue these people to give a sense of scale to just how big the structures were. These are obviously not houses that your average Roman would have lived in.
I'm a biased audience but the library of Celsus is probably the most beautiful structure in Ephesus. It was constructed around 117 AD and is unique because it's also a tomb for Gaius Julius Celsus Polemaenus who was the governor of the Asian province of the Roman empire. His grave was under the ground floor in the library and, at the time, had a statue of Athena over it. She was appropriate because, among other things, she's the goddess of wisdom. The library could hold around 12, 000 scrolls and after Alexandria and Pergamum was the biggest library of it time.
On the steps of Ephesus, there was a tiny menorah scratched into the steps. This was a clear indicator lived in Ephesus during the same time as the Christians, Romans and other diverse racial groups. It was preserved in this plexiglass box.
Even after nearly 1900 years, it's incredibly ornate.
The columns at the side of the two-story facade are actually smaller than those in the middle. This creates an optical illusion which fools the viewer into thinking the building is much taller than it really is. There are also four statues that rest inside the facade. The originals are in Austria but the inscriptions for each are:
Sophia (Wisdom)
Episteme (Knowledge)
Ennoia (Intelligence) and..
Arete (Valor)
So then we continued to the other side of the city...
This is the Agora that would have been closest to the seaside. Sailors would see this first as they entered from the harbor road.
During the late 2nd and 3rd centuries, the Roman empire had a series of spoiled and incompetent rulers that contributed to Ephesus' decline. It faced other obstacles like invading Goths from southern Russia which nearly destroyed the Temple of Artemis and heavily damaged the city. There were assassinations of politicians and violent, sometimes militarily-backed, riots against Christians. Chariots would not normally have been allowed in the city so these ruts in the original road are from sometime around its decline.
The Amphitheater was very close to where the port to the city would have been. Historians estimate the population of ancient cities by the seating capacity of these theaters by quadrupling it. Generally families were an average of four people an only the men were aloud to attend. The acoustics were still incredible. According to Acts and some historians I decided to believe because it makes a good story, Paul was confronted by a large group of silversmiths in the theater. The spread of Christianity that Paul orchestrated from Ephesus had apparently begun to threaten the livelihood of those that made their living by selling souvenirs to the famed temple of Artemis. A near-riot ensured and Paul was lucky to escape with his life.
Performers an Gladiators would have entered through this passageway. The theater had a plumbing system and recessed floor so that the center could be flooded with water to simulate battles at sea.
Arcadian street would have greeted visiting sailors. It was our exit to this fabulous city. Sometime between the 6th and 10th centuries, Ephesus was finished as a city by sever earthquakes and malaria. It remained partially inhabited until the 14th century.
