Tour Plan
The tour starts with your pick-up from your hotel in Selcuk. The pick ups in Selcuk start at 09:00 am. After all the participants of the tour meet up; the discovery of Ephesus starts with the house of Virgin Mary.
The House of Virgin Mary is the place where Mary may have spent her last days. Indeed, she may have come to the area together with Saint John. This place was officially declared a shrine of the Roman Catholic Church in 1986, and since then it has become a popular place of pilgrimage. Pope Paul VI visited shrine in 1967. The visit to the House (church) takes about 1 hour and after our visit; there will be a 10-minute drive to Ephesus. Ephesus is an exceptional testimony to the cultural traditions of the Hellenistic, Roman Imperial, and early Christian periods.
Ephesus is an important site for Christianity; being one of the seven Churches of Revelation. Apostle Paul probably spent two and half years in Ephesus during his third missionary journey. In two hours, you will be exploring the city by walking on the marble streets, accompanied by our English-speaking tour guide. In our tour, we will be seeing the odeon,state agora,the prytaneion,the memmius monument,the domatian temple,Hercules gate,curetes street,the Hadrian temple and the latriens. The visits to the private houses (So-called ‘Terrace Houses’) is an optional visit for an extra 15€/ per person and your guide should be informed on before hand. After the terrace houses, we will carry on with our exploration with the Celsus library,marble road,commercial agora,great theather, and arcadiane (harbour road). A nice luncheon will be served in a quaint local restaurant.
After lunch we will visit the temple of Artemis; which is one of the 'seven world wonders' of antiquity. Here, there will be a good chance to take gorgeous pictures of the church of St.John and the Mosque of İsa Bey. Sirince is an old village of ‘the Byzantine Greeks situated on the hills of Selcuk and 9 km from Ephesus. As part of the peace pact after the Turkish national war (1919-1922), a formal exchange of Turkish and Greeks, was agreed upon and Sirince is inhabited by Turkish now. The village is popular for beautiful traditional houses and fruit-flavored wine production, and you will have free time for some wine tasting. Our daily tour will be finalized around 4:30 pm and we will bring you back to your hotel in Selcuk.
