Ephesus sketch

The most well-preserved Roman ruins, it’s said, outside Rome itself. Deep summer. Bright. Hot. 

 

 

 

Cypress trees like arbor columns along a wide paving-stone thoroughfare. Sandstone structures crumbling in the sun. Behemoth thistles, Queen Anne’s lace and sunflowers. Olives and unripe grapes. Caves in the hills above. It’s cool in the caves: no surprise people lived there.

 

 

Mulberry trees along a walkway planted by a great forgotten Mayor in the 1930s, all the way between Selcuk and the ruins. Hizzoner’s footpath carpeted with mulberry sludge, pecked at by crows.

 

A pleasant walk in the shade past the Artemision, once a World Wonder. Now just a single column serving as a perch for gulls. Plundered for marble 1,500 years ago. Turtles in a green pond, sunbathing, swimming.

 

 

Fruit sellers shaded by implacable Isa Bey Mosque. Touts with fake Roman coins wrapped in newspaper outside the St. John’s Basilica.

 

 

 

Storks on aqueducts.

 

  

 

The Saturday market, in full swing. Mid-afternoon. Summer. Heat. Sun.