The castle stands on Ayasuluk Tepesi, a settlement mound in the town of Selçuk, south-southeast of İzmir. For a long time Ephesus was thought to have been founded around 1050 BC by settlers arriving from Greece. Excavation here and at the nearby Çukuriçi Höyük changed that: there were Neolithic settlements in the immediate area eight thousand years ago, Ephesus itself goes back to the Early Bronze Age, and Ayasuluk was one of its earliest sites.
The hill may also answer an older question. Apasas, capital of the Arzawa and Mira kingdoms that were tied to the Hittite empire in western Anatolia, is now widely taken to have stood here — the identification is treated as all but settled rather than proven.
A trench cut at the southeastern corner of the inner castle found six layers, showing occupation without a break from the Early Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period. Later the centre of gravity moved: the city that grew at Ephesus in Hellenistic and Roman times returned to this hill under the Byzantines, and a fifth- and sixth-century building here has been identified as the bishop's palace. The Turks took the site in 1330 and it became the capital of the Aydınoğulları principality. From the sixteenth century onwards the settlement began to shrink.
Digging began in 1960 under the Ephesus Museum, with a second campaign from 1990 to 2003. In 2007 the work was reorganised by government decision to cover Ayasuluk together with the Basilica of St John, under Mustafa Büyükkolancı of Pamukkale University's archaeology department; that campaign uncovered the houses on the southern slope of the inner castle, its streets, and the castle's pavilion and bath. Large-scale repair of the western walls started in 2010 with support from the municipality of Selçuk, and from 2020 the excavation has been directed by Sinan Mimaroğlu of Hatay Mustafa Kemal University.
When to go
- Climate
- Across İzmir as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 8.9 °C in January to 28 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (146 mm) and lightest in July (4 mm). Long-term means for 1938-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
