Ephesus Coast and Day Trips: Kusadasi Cruise Port Bazaar, Dilek Peninsula National Park, Amazon Beach, Priene Ancient City, Miletus Theatre, Didyma Apollo Temple Oracle, and the Maeander Valley Circuit
The Ephesus coast and day trip route covers the Kusadasi cruise port bazaar and beach, the Dilek Peninsula National Park with the cave beach, the Priene Hellenistic city on the acropolis, the Miletus Great Theatre and Byzantine castle, the Didyma Apollo Temple oracle sanctuary, and the Maeander River valley archaeological circuit.
- 1
Kusadasi: The Cruise Port Gateway
Kusadasi, the coastal resort city 20 kilometers from Ephesus, is the primary port of entry for the Ephesus cruise ship visitors with the cruise terminal and the adjacent bazaar quarter where the leather goods, the carpets, the jewelry, and the spices fill the tourist market that serves the 1 million annual cruise passengers. The Kusadasi bazaar is the most commercially concentrated tourist market in the Aegean Turkey and the place where the carpet purchase negotiation experience is the most consistently offered to the incoming visitor.
- 2
Dilek Peninsula National Park: The Amazon Beach
The Dilek Peninsula National Park 28 kilometers south of Kusadasi, the protected natural area with the 4 beach coves, the hiking trails through the Mediterranean scrubland and the pine forest, and the wild horses that roam the peninsula interior, is the most completely natural coastal environment in the Kusadasi-Ephesus area. The Carp Lake inside the national park, the Amazon village on the approach road where the all-female Amazon warrior community is mythologically located, and the cave beach accessible only by the short hike from the parking area provide the most ecologically diverse single day trip from the Ephesus base.
- 3
Priene: The Hellenistic Grid City
Priene, the Hellenistic city 36 kilometers south of Selcuk that Hippodamos of Miletos laid out on the strict grid plan on the steep hillside below the Mykale mountain around 350 BC, is the best preserved example of the Hellenistic urban planning with the regular insulae of houses, the civic agora, the theatre, and the Temple of Athena that Alexander the Great dedicated at its founding. The Priene theatre with the 6,500 seat capacity and the 5 marble throne chairs for the city dignitaries in the front row is the most completely preserved small-scale Greek theatre in Turkey.
- 4
Miletus: The Great Theatre and the Oracle City
Miletus, the ancient city 22 kilometers south of Priene that was the most important Ionian Greek city in the 6th century BC and the birthplace of the pre-Socratic philosophical tradition with Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, preserves the Great Theatre with the 15,000 seat capacity and the Byzantine castle on the top of the cavea as the most dramatic surviving monument. The Miletus ruins in the flat Maeander delta plain, slowly being absorbed by the advancing agricultural land, also include the Lion Harbour approach with the marble lion sculptures.
- 5
Didyma Apollo Temple: The Oracle Second After Delphi
Didyma, 20 kilometers south of Miletus, is the site of the Temple of Apollo with the largest surviving ancient columns in Turkey at 19.7 meters height and the oracle sanctuary that was the second most important oracle in the ancient world after Delphi. The Didyma oracle operated through the Branchidae priest family rather than a Pythia, and the 3 surviving columns with the carved medusa head relief on the base are the most massive surviving example of the Ionic order in Turkey. The Alexander the Great visit to the oracle before the Persian campaign is documented in the oracle response preserved on stone.
- 6
Maeander Valley Circuit: Three Sites in One Day
The Priene-Miletus-Didyma circuit, the standard organized day trip from Kusadasi and Selcuk covering the 3 ancient sites of the lower Maeander River valley in 8 hours with the lunch at the Didyma village restaurant, is the most historically concentrated single day trip in western Turkey. The circuit covers the transition from the Hellenistic Greek polis at Priene to the archaic Ionian metropolis at Miletus to the Bronze Age oracle sanctuary at Didyma in the most compressed archaeological time sequence available in the Aegean Turkey.