Curetes Street: How to Read the Whole Marble City of Ephesus

Curetes Street is the marble spine of Ephesus, and once you feel it descend under your feet, the logic of a whole classical metropolis clicks into place. This grand colonnaded street runs downhill from the Gate of Hercules at the top of the city to the great library at the foot, and it was engineered to move people, water, and goods in one direction: down, toward trade, toward the theatre, toward a harbour. Reading that slope is the fastest way to understand what Ephesus was, how it governed itself, how it made its money, and why a city of perhaps well over a hundred thousand people slowly suffocated. Stand on the worn slabs and you are standing on the argument of the entire tour.

The slope carries the whole story

Ephesus, near Selcuk in Turkey, does not hand you fragments the way most ruins do. It hands you a city you can walk from end to end, and the fact that carries everything is the gradient. The site slopes, so you walk it almost entirely downhill, and every marble street was built to run that way on purpose. Enter at the top, at the upper Magnesia Gate, and you begin in the civic brain of the metropolis: the State Agora, the Upper Agora, which was not a market but the place of assembly and public business. Around it stand the buildings that ran the city. The small roofed Odeon, also called the Bouleuterion, seated about fourteen hundred people and served as both the meeting hall of the council, the boule, and a covered concert hall. It was remodelled into its present form around one hundred and fifty A D by a wealthy Ephesian, Publius Vedius Antoninus, and his wife Flavia Papiana, though its core is older and Hellenistic. Nearby stood the Prytaneion, the town hall, which kept an eternal civic hearth that was never allowed to go out, a flame that stood for the unbroken life of the city.

From that civic centre, the marble drops away. Curetes Street is the artery that connects the political upper city to the commercial lower city, the ceremony of government flowing down toward the noise of the market. It was one of the three principal streets of Ephesus, colonnaded on both sides, lined behind the columns with shops, fountains, statue bases, monuments, and porticoes floored with mosaic. The slabs you walk are the original ancient paving, worn into ruts by centuries of feet, carts, and rain. The name itself points back into the city's religious life: the Curetes were a priestly college tied to the worship of Artemis, honoured with inscriptions along this very route. In Greek myth the Curetes clashed their weapons to hide the cries of the infant Zeus, but here the name belonged to real priests whose order shaped the ceremonies of Ephesus.

What the street displays as you descend

Walk Curetes Street slowly and it becomes a catalogue of how a Roman city advertised itself. On the north side stands the small, exquisite facade of the Temple of Hadrian, built around one hundred and eighteen A D, in Hadrian's own lifetime, by Publius Vedius Antoninus Sabinus. It was dedicated to three at once: to the emperor Hadrian, to the goddess Artemis, and to the people of Ephesus, the demos. Four Corinthian columns frame the entrance, and over the doorway runs a curved Syrian-type arch carrying a relief of Tyche, the goddess of the city's fortune, wearing a crown shaped like city walls. The reliefs you see today are casts; the originals are kept in the Ephesus Museum in Selcuk. Read it and you understand that a private citizen could bind ruler, goddess, and neighbours into a single monument on the main street.

Look up the slope opposite the temple and a modern roof shelters the Terrace Houses, the Yamac Evler, where you step out of the public marble and into private life. These elite homes climb the north slope of Bulbuldagi in two large blocks, lived in from around the first century B C into the seventh century A D. They preserve some of the finest mosaics and frescoes in the Roman world, along with marble panelling, open courtyards, running water piped into the rooms, indoor latrines, and hypocaust heating that warmed the floors from below. The Terrace Houses need a separate ticket, an extra fifteen euros in twenty twenty-six, and they are the domestic counterpart to everything grand and public outside.

At the foot of the street waits the image everyone carries away: the two-storey marble facade of the Library of Celsus. It is richer than it looks, because this library is also a tomb. Tiberius Julius Aquila built it around one hundred and ten to one hundred and thirty-five A D for his father, the senator Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, who lies in a sarcophagus in a crypt directly beneath the reading room. It once held around twelve thousand scrolls, and its four facade statues personify wisdom, virtue, intelligence, and knowledge. The statues on site are copies, the originals in the Ephesus Museum in Vienna, and the collapsed facade was re-erected by anastylosis between nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy-eight, led by Volker Michael Strocka. It is genuine ancient marble, pieced back together in the modern age.

Where the marble points

Curetes Street delivers you to the market and the scale of the city. Beside the library opens the Commercial Agora, the Tetragonos Agora, about one hundred and ten metres on a side, colonnaded on all four sides with shops. Its triple Gate of Mazeus and Mithridates, dedicated in four to three B C to the emperor Augustus, was funded by two freedmen of Augustus and his general Agrippa, former slaves who paid for the grand gateway into the beating market. Beyond it, cut into the slope of Mount Pion, the Great Theatre held about twenty-five thousand spectators, the largest in Asia Minor, and the Book of Acts sets here the two-hour riot of the silversmiths against the Apostle Paul.

From the theatre the Marble Road runs on, and the Arcadian Way strikes west toward the sea: over five hundred metres long, once lit at night by lamps, an honour tradition grants to only Rome and Antioch. It points now at empty ground. The Kucuk Menderes river silted the bay until the water retreated about five kilometres, and the great port was left stranded inland. Not conquest but silt killed Ephesus. That is the story Curetes Street sets in motion, and to feel it, you have to walk the slope yourself. Plan the descent with these Selcuk (Ephesus) walking tours, then start from the top gate in Selcuk (Ephesus) and let the marble carry you down.

Sources

• Ephesus, Wikipedia: overview of the city's history, the Great Theatre's capacity, and the harbour silting that ended its commercial life.
• Library of Celsus, Wikipedia: construction dates, the crypt tomb of Celsus, scroll capacity, and the anastylosis reconstruction led by Volker Michael Strocka.
• Temple of Hadrian at Ephesus, Livius: the early second-century dedication by Publius Vedius Antoninus Sabinus and the Syrian-type arch above the entrance.
• Terrace Houses in Ephesus, Turkish Archaeological News: the slope houses on Bulbuldagi, their mosaics, running water, occupation span, and separate ticket.
• Gate of Mazaeus and Mithridates, Livius: the Augustan dedication of four to three B C and the two freedmen who funded the market gate.