Situated on the night-ingale mountain above the City of Ephesus, where supposedly she spent her last years. St. John came to Anatolia before 48 A.D. He accompanied Virgin Mary in her journey from Jerusalem to Ephesus.
Virgin Mary spend last years of her life in Ephesus. Home of two Seven Wonders of the World 595 B.C.- 30 B.C.
Persians, coming from the East, invaded Anatolia and marched to conquer Greece but were defeated by the Greeks. Persians hold possesion of Anatolia for two centuries. The greek emperor Great Alexander with the desire of conquering the East sweeps the Persian Empire out of the Anatolian peninsula in 300 B.C. Their dominance will last until the Roman invasion.
Ancient City Ephesus
During this period, the temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the World is built in Ephesus. Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, was the biggest monument of the Greek world.
It was the first completely marble monument of such dimensions. The golden age of Ionian (Greek) culture was glorified with this temple.
It was constructed on the site dedicated to mother goddess of Anatolia, Cybele. Caria was of the small kingdoms in the southwest of Anatolia and the Carians indigenous to Anatolia went under the influence of Greeks after they formed colonies in the Eagean coast of Anatolia.
King Mausolea married his elder sister in 4th century B.C. After his death her wife ordered that a tomb of unparalled dimensions be constructed. This tomb became the most monumental tomb of the Greek world and is considered one of the
Seven Wonders of the World
The name mausoleum, in use today, comes from the name of Mausolea.
See the ruins from the period of St. Paul, see Odeon, monumental fountains, temples brothel, library, great theatre gymnasiums, double church, stadium. After lunch break, visit Archeological Museums, Mosque of Isabey, St. John's basilica and his tomb, temple of Diana (one of the seven Wonders of the ancient world.)
The city as a work of art
What is more, in many instances the city itself was indeed conspicuously designed as a work of art.The monuments would be arranged in the manner of a stage set, it has an aggregated effect on visitors. Special devices were used to achieve effects, such as the passage from a narrow street into an open square, the colonnade to combine shade with agnificence, and the propylon - a type of monumental gateway known to the Greeks since the Bronze.
This would usually consist of a stepped podium with columns supporting a decorated (and perhaps inscribed) entablature. The format is perhaps best known from the monumental approach to the Acropolis at Athens, but the same device is used in Turkey.
A street of Ephesus
The propylon to the Athena Complex at Pergamum, taken to Berlin earlier this century, was especially splendid, with two storeys and a bas-relief decorating the balustrae of the balcony. At Aphrodisias, the propylaea giving acess to the agora have recently been re-erected (SB3.1), and represent the acme of that frothy grandeur that the achitects of the Italian Baroque so admired.
At Ephesus, for example, there is little attempt to impress to landward: a city located in Antiquity on the sea (which has now receded), travellers came into her great harbour and, as at Miletus, the monuments are arranged to either side of the colonnanded street, the Arkadiane, from the harbour, with the great theatre, set into its hill, as a visual back-stop (6).
Equally, citizens seated in the upper ranges of the theatre could admire a wide panorama, including the harbour, source of the city's wealth. The aim was that, even before the visitor was close enough to read any inscriptions or admire the sculpture, the architecture should "speak".
As Fellows remarked (1852, 25) of Pergamum, I required no guide; the stupendous ruins proclaimed their builders, and the situation told who selected it.
Or Theodore II Lascaris, the future Emperor, who visited the site in the 13th century: It is full everywhere of the majesty of the Hellenic spirit, and the vestiges of their wisdom: the city itself demonstrates this in its disdain for us, mere latecomers to the greatness of its ancestral glory (cited in Stoneman 1987B, 19).
Or Lord Kinross, who proclaims that Pergamum is a mountain transformed into a monument (Kinross 1955, 119).
Both Greeks and Romans, like later generations, would therefore have accepted that architecture could be symbolic - the carrier of meaning, although the meanings it was required to bear changed over time.
One of these meanings was no doubt the prestige associated with the heroic past: thus Green (1990, 566) calls the Roman rush to acquire things Greek and Hellenistic the mass market in nostalgia.
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