Mary spent her final years near Ephesus

Three and a half million of Turkey's Seventy three million citizens live in the area surrounding Izmir...pretty dense building patterns! Izmir is a MAJOR shipping port, stacks of containers heading somewhere! However, as we drove the hour and a half south to Ephesus you could have been driving California's Central Valley ...they grow corn, peaches, apricots, walnuts, figs watermelons, all manner of vegetables, grapes for raisins and wine ( yes, they have a "baby" wine industry). In 1922 the governments of Greece and Turkey "exchanged citizens" so Greeks are Greek and Turks are Turkish...(I, wonder if they asked the exchangees if they wanted that?), our guide explained that it is a secular country and as such people are expected to be good within themselves, but can drink alcohol and still go to prayer...we passed a significant brewery, and were served wine at lunch.



On to Mary...
Three Popes have visited the church built near where The Blessed Mother probably lived out her life. It is a lovely place and felt rather special to be there...it is, of course, overwhelmed with cruise ship visitors these days, but still a special place...hard to explain


Ephesus itself is larger than Pompeii ( seems important to the locals) and was once populated with 100,000 citizens and slaves. There was a good sewage system (into the Aegean ) plenty of water, homes built into the hillside, a library containing 12,000 "books", a lively downtown , a theater to seat 20 thousand, a very large shopping area or Agora as it was called
and baths in several strategic places in town. Of note is the men's bath where there were many places to sit...and they sent their slaves in the early morning to "warm the seats" which were cold marble. We're told there was a roof and a lovely mosaic to look at while they pondered....


The Library:



Look comfy??r

The city moved four times...the rivers silted up and the waterfront kept moving away...we visited the third site...now 5 miles from the sea.


The theater...until two years ago they had concerts here...more excavation and repair now on the right.


This is the last entry street from the seaport...before it moved again.
It is good to know how many people lived here because it was probably as crowded as we were with our fellow cruise travelers...this is a rare opportunity to be just one in a place.

There is something to be learned from that.

Location:Izmir, Turkey