We woke up to a beautiful sunny day in our quirky boutique hotel and hopped on the bus, and went off to Ephesus. Now to write about the whole of the city of Ephesus we would need to write an entire book so we are just going to focus on the Library of Celsus.
As we walked up to the Library of Celsus it is obvious why it is probably one of the most photographed historical structures of Turkey. It belongs to the ancient city of Ephesus located on the Aegean coast. The history of the Celsus library is straight forward. It was built in 135 AD by Gaius Julius Aquila who wanted to honour his father, at that time a general governor for the province of Asia and was named Celsus. Therefore it stands to reason that the family was rich and able to carry out such intricate building projects. At the same time as honouring his father, I suspect that some of the motive might also be to boast, because at one time, the library could hold up to 12,000 scrolls making it the third largest library of the ancient world.
We walked up nine steps to the front facade, where niches in the wall held four statues. Unfortunately the ones we see today are not the originals because they are in the Ephesus museum of Vienna but their purpose was to represent wisdom, knowledge, virtue and judgment. Maybe these were qualities that Gaius felt his father possessed because he also had his white marble sarcophagus, measuring 2.5 metres buried underneath the library. Adorned with the sculptures of Medusa, Nike and Eros.
Exploring the Celsus library of Ephesus is quick and easy. The interior hall is nothing like the grandeur of the front façade. It is a small but impressive structure and ultimately one of the most important architectural structures belonging to the ancient city. After we were done in the library we wondered around for a while longer before heading back to the bus to ride around the country side and visit some geological sites.
At the geological sites we learnt about the formation of metamorphic rocks and their effect on patterns we saw in the rock faces. The two main types of metamorphic rocks we learnt about were those that are foliated because they have formed in an environment with either directed pressure or shear stress, and those that are not foliated because they have formed in an environment without directed pressure or relatively near the surface with very little pressure at all. We also learnt about the different grades of metamorphism and how that effects the different types of foliation, including slate, phyllite, schist, and gneiss.
After visiting multiple sites that demonstrated these principles to us and wearing out our hand lens’ it was off to the next hotel for the night.
