Day 4 – Tuesday 31 May 2016 - Highlights of Ephesus Tour: the 'Mary House'

We pulled in to Kuşadasi on time to find that Royal Caribbean’s ‘Brilliance of the Seas’ was already well installed there along with the (very expensive) Seabourn ‘Odyssey’ cruise ship plus one from a minor cruise line whose name we forget!

This was our first time in this predominantly Muslim country and initial impressions were favourable.  Visually the buildings and landscape were something of a cross between Spain and Greece.  Security was noticeable everywhere with road block checks at the entrance to every significant community and soldiers like in the Cold War days at the border between East and West with mirrors on long handles so that they can see under vehicles.  These didn’t delay us much but we did see one large white van pulled over and its very Muslim-looking driver outside his vehicle.

There was some delay on the coach as it seemed that some passengers who had opted for a Spanish-speaking tour might be in the wrong bus.  Eventually we set off towards Ephesus.  When we had booked this tour (Highlights of Ephesus) – as always rather in a hurry – we hadn’t noticed that, as well as a visit to the ancient site of Ephesus, it included a stop at the so-called ‘Mary House’ near Ephesus.

As we approached the Mary House there’s a statue of Mary at the side of the road paid for by American Christians.

It seems that there’s a lot of evidence that Mary, Mother of Jesus, spent the latter years of her life in Ephesus, a town outside the Roman Empire at that time so that she could escape the persecution she experienced in the Holy Land.  On the cross Jesus had asked John the Apostle to take care of Mary and it seems that he did.  

Paul addressed the citizens of Ephesus in the great amphitheatre there and also wrote to them – in his epistle/letter to the Ephesians.  Trouble is, like all such situations, putting forward controversial views is likely to lead to trouble and his address led to riots on the streets and Paul was promptly locked up!

Water cistern

In the Victorian era, a disabled German nun who never left Germany had a vision – isn’t it always like that with these things?! – and she described a landscape and a building near Ephesus where Mary had lived out her last days.  Archaeologists found the site she described and started investigating.  They found significant remains of a building as the nun had described and it was later reconstructed as the building which visitors see today.  The original was almost certainly larger than the structure of today but what is visible now is what they are most certain of.

Entry is free of charge.  No photos are allowed inside.  Outside you can light a candle, fill up the earthenware bottle which the tour guide had given each of us with ‘holy water’ from the spring which Mary had undoubtedly used on her day and make a wish there.  The guide assured us that every wish she had ever made there had come true.

After we had visited the house we walked back to the coach.  Some other tourists were looking over a wall and we wondered what they were looking at.  And there was a snake on a pile of brush cuttings sliding away.

Research on good old Google suggests it was a Dwarf Snake.  These are typically around 79 cm in length and a relatively common snake in almost all parts of Turkey.  It’s not dangerous or poisonous.  Its name in Turkish is "Uysal", meaning  "Docile".