My First Visit to One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The ruins of the Temple of Artemis in Selçuk

I finally visited my first of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. One down. Two to go!

Walking from the road back to the ruins of the Temple of Artemis was this building, the Türbe, an ancient tomb from the very early Ottoman period. Who was buried inside has been lost to those ravages, savages, cabbages of time.

Now, why did I say Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and then add" "One down. Two to go!" Because only three of the seven still exist in any form whatsoever. The Great Pyramid of Giza, in Egypt, is the only one that still exists relatively intact.

The Temple of Artemis is one of two that still exists. Both of these exist in an extreme state of ruin. The other one of the three remainder Wonders is the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, near Bogrum, now a beach resort in the southwest corner of Anatolia (Asian) Turkey. But I'm not in a beach resort on the Turkish. I'm in Selçuk. And here we have the Temple of Artemis.

The column is a reconstruction. It has not survived intact since the Greek era. But it was reconstructed from the actual stones on site, so it the real deal, just the real deal re-arranged. 

The temple ruins, however, are 100 percent the real thing.

You do get a sense of the layout of the actual temple. And an idea of what one the columns framing the temple would have looked like.

Hey, it's more than you can see of the Colossus of Rhodes, thank you very much.

And it really did feel somewhat magical to see my first of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

And that's your proof.

There is a cross design on that one stone in the foreground:

I don't know if that's coincidental or from the early (very early) Christians who inhabited Ephesus at the time very soon after the crucifixion.

The next stop on the walking tour will be more ruins, this time being the ruins of an early hamam. But first:

The Kılıç Aslan Cami, a mosque I am passing on the short walk from the Temple of Artemis ruins to the İsabey Turkish Bath-hamam.

And there it was. Surrounded in chain link fence. But I heard (read) that even though it was unattended, you could walk in and explore the ruins.

And, sure enough, there was a wide opening in the chain link fence and no ticket booth in sight. So in I walked.

And here I am.

This was the hamam built to accompany the first mosque in this town, which would have been very early in the Ottoman Era, as Anatolian Turkey was converting from Orthodox Christianity to Islam almost simultaneously with the Reconquista in Spain, where the Iberian Peninsula was being converted from Islam to Roman Catholicism.

It is no longer a functioning hamam, so no risk of running into fat tourists wrapped in peshtemals.

It was, in my opinion, absolutely awesome. Here, as you can see, is a hole in the roof.

View lowered to still show the hole in the roof, but also some of the interior design.

You want to avoid the tourist horde? There was no one but me walking through these amazing ruins.

The holes in the roof visible in this photo were intentional.

These were to let light into the hamam, the Turkish bath house, and to allow ventilation. That's just the way we did things before central ventilation and electric lighting.

I feel clean. I feel purefied. What I did not feel was unsafe. The stone walls were sturdy, the floor was hard earth. There was at least one person on the other side of the chain link fence that saw me in there and I did not get yelled at, from which I concluded my presence was A-OK.

Incredible. Fascinating. Historic. And I had it all to myself. The off-the-beaten-path tourist's dream. Time to go out and explore more of Selçuk.