LIBRARY OF CELSUS
As I write this article (Friday, October 17), I’m sitting in my hotel in Barcelona, Spain – ready to begin our 11-day, 10-night Mediterranean cruise tomorrow. We are leaving from Barcelona and going to Mykonos, Greece; Ephesus, Turkey; Istanbul, Turkey; Santorini, Greece; Olympia, Greece; and finishing up in Rome, Italy. There are about 35 members of the Travel Club here, and everyone is very excited about our upcoming adventures! Of course, we have to overcome a little bit of jet lag first.
Our almost 500 members tell us they overwhelmingly want to do a Caribbean cruise each spring and something more exotic each fall. So, this is our Fall 2025 exotic cruise!
Each port stop will be exciting, but I am especially excited about Ephesus, Turkey; a city over 3,000 years old! During its heyday in Roman times, it was one of the largest cities and trading ocean ports in the Roman Empire. Ephesus was and still is located on the coast in the Eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. It had a fantastic harbor for the trading ships to dock. Large cities were (and still are) centered around the trade routes, and Ephesus was very important to world trade for the Silk Road, the Royal Road and routes eastward to the Black Sea. These goods were then distributed further in the Roman Empire by sea and overland by roads to Babylon, Smyrna and the Cayster River Valley. Goods such as olive oil and wine came from the west and were shipped further east. Ephesus was also an important trading port for grain, lumber, and other commodities.
During the Roman Empire, Ephesus was a city of about 250,000 inhabitants, which made it one of the most populated cities in the empire. Our travel club cruisers will be walking inside the Great Theater in Ephesus, which holds about 25,000 spectators. Interestingly, the Romans loved their theater and plays; they built their amphitheaters to hold about 10% of the local populace. So, extrapolate the math, and the population of Ephesus would have been about 250,000 people in Roman times.
The Romans had a very high value on education, and the Library of Celsus was one of the largest libraries of the ancient world, holding over 12,000 scroll manuscripts. This two-story building showed the intricacies of Roman art and architecture. And there are still many finely decorated “houses of the rich” from the Roman Era nestled on the hillside overlooking the ancient city. We will have an opportunity on one of our shore excursions to view modern-day archeologists extricate ancient artifacts from these ancient houses! Exciting!
Exciting news about next fall’s exotic trip: We are flying up to Boston and then will be doing a 12-day, 11-night New England/Canada Celebrity cruise to locations in Maine, Nova Scotia, Quebec City, and Prince Edward Island.
Why don’t you come and join our Travel Club and its adventures? We do lots of exciting things locally and in-state also. Our meeting dates/times are publicized on our community’s Google Group; come and be a part of our exciting and rapidly growing club!
