Mark Anthony and Cleopatra came here to plot against Rome. St. Paul preached in the Great Theater. The long white marble streets are rutted by chariot wheels. The ancient city of Ephesus offers some of the Mediterranean's most magnificently restored Greco-Roman ruins. On select nights the site becomes the stage for a candlelit concert. The strains of Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart and Brahms combine with a backdrop of antiquity for a never-to-be-forgotten evening.

Amazons and Alexander
The history of Ephesus intertwines with legend. One tale holds that Amazons, a tribe of warlike women, founded the city. Another tells how the Oracle at Delphi advised an Ionian prince, Androklos, to locate his colony on a site "indicated by a fish and a boar." When his expedition arrived in Anatolia, a fish being grilled set the bush ablaze, a wild pig burst forth, and Ephesus was born. The city grew to a prosperous trading port and center for the cult of Artemis.

History's great minds came to Ephesus: the philosopher Heraclitus, the geographer Strabo, the orator Cicero. Conquerors came as well. Lydia's King Croesus decorated the city with gilded calves. Cyrus of Persia turned the city into a cultural hub. A successive conqueror, Alexander the Great, offered to rebuild the great temple that had been torched by a madman seeking celebrity. The Ephesians chose to do the job themselves, saying, "It is not appropriate for a god to present gifts to another god." The reconstructed Temple of Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Caesars and Saints
Following Alexander's death, Rome annexed the region. Mark Anthony was greeted by a lavish procession in which men dressed as satyrs and women as bacchantes. Under Caesar Augustus, Ephesus was the capital of the Empire's Asian province.

Long a center to the goddess Artemis, Ephesus became a stage for the conversion from paganism to Christianity. Saint Paul preached and wrote his letters to the Thessalonians and the Corinthians from Ephesus. In 54 AD, calling the icons false gods, he angered local silversmiths who mobbed the theater where he preached, shouting, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians." Saint Paul barely escaped.

After the Crucifixion, the Virgin Mary came to Ephesus with Saint John the Evangelist, and spent her final days in a small cottage nearby. Saint John wrote his gospel here and converted many from the cult of Artemis. Today a church marks his grave.

Ephesus was plundered by the Goths. Arabs looted the town in the 7th and 8th centuries. Despite a brief renaissance during which the Isa Bey Mosque was built, the city declined. The slow silting of the river choked off access to trade. Over the centuries, Ephesus had been moved at least four times to maintain its link with the water. Excavation began a century ago to recover the city from obscurity.

An Archaeological Treasure
Every street of Ephesus tells a story. An architectural wonder, the Library of Celsus presents an intricately carved two-story entrance complete with colonnade – and no building behind it. The library was built in 135 A.D. by a young man to honor the memory of his father. A tunnel beneath this picturesque building leads across the street to a building that was once either a brothel or a bar.

A walk along Curetes Street reveals the Baths of Skolasticia, the Temple of Hadrian and Hercules Gate – along with one of the earliest instances of a running indoor sewage system. On the slopes, the homes of the wealthy feature intricate mosaics in the courtyards. In the Great Theater, the remarkable acoustics can summon the image of a gladiator dying before the affluent crowd.