Ephesus

Ephesus was an ancient Greek city on the Ionian coast of what is now western Turkey, founded by Attic and Ionian Greek settlers around the tenth century BC and later shaped successively by Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman rule. It grew into one of the ancient Mediterranean's major centres of trade and religion, renowned above all for the Temple of Artemis, completed around 550 BC and counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, a structure said to have measured some 418 by 239 feet and to have been ringed by more than a hundred marble columns. The city's surviving Roman era buildings include the Library of Celsus, built around 125 AD to hold nearly 12,000 scrolls, and a great theatre capable of seating about 25,000 spectators, supplied by a network of at least six aqueducts of varying scale. Ephesus was also a significant early centre of Christianity, home to the sixth century Basilica of St. John built under the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, and UNESCO inscribed the site as a World Heritage Site in 2015.