3 Days Ephesus and Pamukkale Tour From Izmir Airport

Briefing

• Ephesus Ancient City: At its peak, Ephesus held over 250,000 residents, making it one of Rome's largest eastern ports.

• Marble Streets: Ephesus's central marble road connected the upper city gates all the way down to the ancient harbor.

• The Odeon: City council members gathered in the Odeon to debate laws and budgets that governed all of Roman Ephesus.

• The Agora: Stalls selling grain, textiles, and pottery once filled every meter of the commercial agora in ancient Ephesus.

• The Temple of Hadrian: Relief panels inside the Temple of Hadrian show gods, emperors, and mythological scenes in remarkable carved detail.

• The Monumental Fountains: Carved sea creatures, river gods, and nymphs decorated the stone facades of Ephesus's public water monuments.

• The Library of Celsus: Roman architect Vitrusius Pollio designed double walls for the Library of Celsus in Ephesus to protect scrolls from humidity.

• The Great Amphitheatre: Three tiers of marble seating rise steeply above the stage of Ephesus's amphitheater, offering sweeping views over the ruins.

• The Roman Baths: Vaulted brick arches of Ephesus's Scholastica Baths still stand to considerable height, giving visitors a sense of the original scale.

• House of Virgin Mary: Pope Paul VI visited the House of the Virgin Mary near Ephesus in 1967, and subsequent popes have made the same pilgrimage.

• Temple of Artemis: A single reconstructed column rising from a marshy field is all that remains of ancient Ephesus's most celebrated monument.

Briefing

• Pamukkale: Pamukkale means 'Cotton Castle' in Turkish, and the name perfectly describes the cloud-like white formations that rise above the valley.

• White Calcium Terraces: Each pool at Pamukkale differs slightly, some wide and shallow, others narrow with curved calcium ridges half a meter tall.

• Hierapolis Ancient City: Hierapolis sits at an elevation that gives visitors sweeping views over the Curuksu valley on one side and the white calcium terraces on the other.

• The Necropolis: Walking through the Necropolis is like reading an ancient city in reverse, where the living city ends, the city of the dead begins, spreading out across the hillside.

• Bath and Basilica: When Byzantine Christians took over the bath, they added an apse on the eastern wall, the standard architectural signal that a Roman building had been converted to Christian worship.

• Frontinius Gate: Frontinius Gate survived several major earthquakes largely intact, and its lower courses of stone are among the best-preserved sections of the Hierapolis city boundary.

• Frontinius Street: Side streets branched off Frontinius Street at regular intervals, following the strict grid layout that Roman urban planners applied consistently across the empire.

• Latrina: Carved seat surfaces in the latrina show smoothing from centuries of use, evidence that this facility was in regular service for a very long time.

• Northern Byzantine Gate: Hierapolis's Byzantine walls extended across the northern end of the site to close the gap between the steep hillside on one side and the travertine cliffs on the other.

• Fountain of the Tritons: Relief carving on the Triton Fountain shows high-quality Roman stonework from the Imperial period, when Hierapolis had the wealth to invest in decorative public infrastructure.

• The Temple of Apollon: Carved column drums and large stone platform blocks from the Temple of Apollon are still visible at the site, showing the scale of the original structure.

• Cleopatra Antique Thermal Pool: Roman columns, capitals, and building fragments rest on the sandy bottom of Cleopatra Pool, giving swimmers the surreal experience of floating above an ancient ruin, entry is payable on-site, not included in the tour.