Ephesus is the sort of place where the scale arrives slowly, one marble block at a time. It lies in the plain beside Selçuk, less than three kilometres from the town centre and about twelve from the resort of Kuşadası, and once stood on the sea. The Cayster river kept dropping silt until the harbour became fields, and the city that had been one of the great ports of the Roman province of Asia was left stranded a few kilometres inland.
What stays standing is astonishing. The facade of the Library of Celsus, the long colonnaded Marble Street, the Great Theatre cut into the hillside and big enough for tens of thousands of spectators, the terraced houses where wealthy families painted walls and laid mosaics. Ephesus was also a place of pilgrimage twice over. Artemis was worshipped here in a temple counted among the seven wonders of the ancient world, and today a single re-erected column in a field near Selçuk is all that marks it. Later Saint Paul preached and caused a riot among the silversmiths, and tradition says John spent his last years on the hill above, where a basilica was built over the grave.
For riders, the approach is easy and unremarkable: a flat run from Izmir by the main roads or a short hop up the coast from Kuşadası, with traffic that gets thicker as you near the gates. The ruins themselves are walked, and the stones are slick and hot, so wear shoes you can handle in. Go at opening time in summer, when the heat comes down hard by late morning and the cruise-ship crowds fill the Marble Street shoulder to shoulder. Autumn and early spring are kinder, with softer light and room to breathe.
Selçuk is the practical base. It has fuel, restaurants serving grilled meat and fresh gözleme, and an old aqueduct that storks nest on in season. Fill the tank there rather than hunting along the farm roads, and finish with a drive up to the museum and the Basilica of Saint John for the view across the plain to where the sea used to be.