The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was, for several centuries, one of the most spectacular religious buildings in the ancient world. Antipater of Sidon listed it among the Seven Wonders in his second-century BC poem and described it as making the other six wonders look like nothing in comparison. Today a single reconstructed column stands on the marsh edge, with the Byzantine fortifications of Selçuk and the dome of the Basilica of St John in the background.
The temple was built in stages, first in the eighth century BC as a small altar to Artemis the mother goddess, then expanded around 560 BC into the version Antipater described, then burned by an arsonist named Herostratus on the night Alexander the Great was born in 356 BC, then rebuilt yet again on the same foundations. It survived for another six hundred years until the Goths sacked Ephesus in 268 AD.
For a Kuşadası cruise visit the Temple is a fifteen-to-twenty-minute stop, not a destination in itself. The historical weight is the draw. The view of the lone column, the castle on the hill behind it, and the storks that nest on its capital makes the photograph worth the small detour from the road back to the port.
