Landmark Selçuk, İzmir, Türkiye
Cats in Ephesus
A Roman city on the Aegean with a two-storey library, a theatre for 25,000, and a couple of hundred cats who sleep on the marble and are fed by the guards. One of them has an Instagram account.
Where to find cats in Ephesus: The ruins of Ephesus, three kilometres from the town of Selçuk, an hour south of İzmir. When: The gate opens at eight. Be there. By ten the cruise buses from Kuşadası have arrived and the marble is a queue. October to April for the heat. Why here: Cats asleep on the steps of a library built in AD 135, in a city that once held a quarter of a million people and now holds them.
The short version
- Where
- The ruins of Ephesus, three kilometres from the town of Selçuk, an hour south of İzmir
- When
- The gate opens at eight. Be there. By ten the cruise buses from Kuşadası have arrived and the marble is a queue. October to April for the heat
- How long
- Three hours for the site. The cats are on the way down, so take the upper gate in and walk with the slope
- What it costs
- A site ticket, and a separate one for the Terrace Houses, which are worth it. The cats are included
- Why here
- Cats asleep on the steps of a library built in AD 135, in a city that once held a quarter of a million people and now holds them
What to bring
- The first hourEight in the morning is you, the guards and the cats. Ten is the cruise ships. The difference is the whole visit.
- A card for the ticket officePrices for foreign visitors rise every year. The Terrace Houses are a second ticket and the best thing on the site.
- Water, and nothing for the catsThere is no shade on the marble. The guards feed the cats; the site asks you not to.
- Shoes for polished marbleTwo thousand years of feet. The Curetes Street is glass. Walk down it, not up.
Why there are cats everywhere
The guards at Ephesus feed the cats, and the cats have decided the ruins are theirs.
Ephesus was one of the great cities of the Roman world, a port of maybe a quarter of a million people with a theatre that seated 25,000, a library with a facade two storeys high, and streets paved in marble that are still there because the harbour silted up and the city was abandoned rather than rebuilt. It is the best-preserved classical city in the eastern Mediterranean and one of the most visited sites in Türkiye.
The cats are not ancient. They are the descendants of the cats of Selçuk, the town three kilometres away, who found that a fenced site full of warm marble, shade under the columns and a staff of guards who buy cat food is a better life than a town. There are a couple of hundred, by most estimates, and the site staff feed them and look after them, which is why they are sleek, calm and photographed more than the Library of Celsus. A ginger one who lives near the library has an Instagram account, Garfield of Ephesus, run by somebody who is not him.
What that means for a visitor is that the cats are part of the site’s day. They are asleep on the steps of the library in the morning light, on the seats of the theatre in the afternoon, and along the Curetes Street in between, on column bases and fallen capitals, entirely unmoved by twenty-five centuries. They pose. They do not move for you.
Go in at the upper gate and walk down. The marble street slopes towards the library, the theatre and the harbour road, the light is behind you, and every cat on the way is on a warm stone facing the sun.
The walk
In at the upper gate and down the marble street with the slope and the light: the Odeon, the Temple of Hadrian, the Terrace Houses, the library, the theatre. Three hours, and the cats are on every step of it.
- From İzmirTrain or bus to Selçuk, then a dolmuş or taxi to the gate80 minAbout an hour to Selçuk, then ten minutes to the site. Ask for the upper gate to walk downhill.
- From SelçukDolmuş from the bus station to the lower gate, or taxi to the upper one10 minThree kilometres. Walkable, but not in July, and not uphill.
- From KuşadasıDolmuş or tour bus30 minWhere the cruise ships land. If you are on one, be first off it.
The Odeon and the State Agora
The small theatre at the top of the site, the council chamber of the city. Quiet in the first hour, and the first cats are on its seats in the morning sun. Warm up here before the marble street.
The top of the site, before the buses. The cats have it to themselves.Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0 The Temple of Hadrian
Halfway down Curetes Street, the small temple with the arch and the Medusa. Cats on the column bases either side. This is the photograph everybody takes; take yours with the cat in it.
On Curetes Street. Second century, third cat from the left.Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0 The Terrace Houses
The second ticket. The houses of the rich, under a roof, with their mosaics and frescoes intact. Cool, and the cats know it; look for them on the walkways.
In the shade. The cats found the roof before you did.Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0 The Library of Celsus
The facade at the bottom of the street, two storeys of columns and statues, built as a tomb in AD 135. The cats sleep on its steps. Garfield, if he is about, is here. Sit on the steps and wait.
By the library. The most photographed cats in Türkiye.Slyronit, CC BY-SA 4.0 The Great Theatre
Through the agora to the theatre, cut into the hill, seats for 25,000 and a view down the harbour road to where the sea used to be. Cats on the upper tiers in the afternoon. Out through the lower gate.
The theatre end. Twenty-five thousand seats, one cat per hundred.Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0
Same numbers as the list. Worth keeping open on your phone.
The cats you will meet
A couple of hundred, fed and looked after by the site staff, descended from the cats of the town nearby. Sleek, calm and completely at ease with crowds, because the crowds have never once been allowed to touch the exhibits and the cats have noticed.
Library cats
Ginger, mostly, on the steps of Celsus.
Garfield and his relations. The stars.
Street cats
Tabby and white, on column bases along Curetes Street.
Posing. They know where the sun is and where you are.
Theatre cats
Any colour, on the upper tiers.
The afternoon shift, when the light moves off the street.
Everybody says The cats of Ephesus are ancient.
Actually They are the cats of Selçuk who found a better address. Cats did live in Roman Ephesus, and the Romans kept them, but the ones asleep on the library steps are a modern colony, fed by the guards and neutered by the town, and all the better for it.
How not to be the annoying one
- The guards feed them. Do not. There are signs, and there is nowhere to put food down that is not a monument.
- Do not climb on the ruins to reach a cat that has. It can; you may not, and the guards will say so.
- No flash in the Terrace Houses. The frescoes and the cats both dislike it.
- Water for you, and lots of it. There is no shade on the marble and the cats have taken all of it under the columns.
- First hour or last hour. The cats are the same; the crowds are not.
