Ephesus

A grand public fountain along this part of the street, astride the main water conduit; its statues have been moved to the Selçuk museum. The water system and fountain were erected from 102 AD by the initiative and personal expense of Claudius Aristion, as the inscription is at pains to have you know. The water was not only for washing and drinking but powered mills, including a sawmill for marble. Aristion at times held just about every great position in the city. He fell foul of political skulduggery but was rehabilitated and was sufficiently esteemed to be buried within the city.

A curious direction sign carved in the street outside the Nymphaeum. Its pictogram reveals that it was pointing the way to a brothel: the House of Pleasure lies that way, but there were others. (At Ephesus you only see the grand stone buildings along main drag, but this was just the nucleus of a sprawl of lesser structures, all the wooden or wattle shibeens, brothels, stables, livestock yards, hostels, workshops and humble dwellings that time has swept away.) The carving is thought to be from life, from someone with modern European shoe size 40, a middle toe longer than the big toe, and pes cavus or "flat foot" - maybe the Bawd or Madame? Various ribald interpretations are possible, one being that if your foot couldn't fill the carving, or if your money couldn't fill the adjacent notch, then the working girls didn't want your custom.

It's an attractive compact structure from say 117 AD—that's shortly before Emperor Hadrian busied himself building a wall across northern England, and perhaps the dedication to him came later. It was excavated and re-constructed from its fragments in the 1950s. Medusa is one of the carvings on its portico.

A bath complex along Curetes Street opposite the Terrace Houses.

This is the only site within Ephesus with an additional admission fee, and it's worth it. This was the upmarket residential quarter, built on the slope above Curetes Street, and blinged with marbles and mosaics. Excavations began in the 1960s and continue, with the whole area under a protective canopy and with raised walkways and interpretive boards.

A puzzle—it contained the body of a 15-18 year old woman but had no inscription. She died circa 50-20 BC, when only the most high-ranking nobles were buried within city walls. A legend has grown that this was Arsinoë sister of Cleopatra, but that story doesn't stand up. As if in a scene from an Indiana Jones movie, the body disappeared in Germany during World War II, so modern forensics cannot be brought to bear.

A compulsory photo stop, a splendid marble 48-seater by the Octagon. Only the residents of the Terrace Houses and a handful of other plutocrats had their own sanitary fittings. Everyone else had to use the communal crappers, of which this is the best preserved. It was roofed, and beneath the seats flowed spent water from the bathhouse. Backsides were cleansed with sponges on sticks - after use these were rinsed in the flow then dunked in vinegar to await the next customer. Analysis of the slurry showed that citizens were riddled with intestinal worms, disseminated from other human and animal backsides further up the food and water chain.

It probably wasn't the brothel that its excavators supposed. Ephesus had plenty of those, but given its position this must have been about the most expensive and publicly visible des-res in the city. The name arose from all the erotica found within, but this was more likely private porn in an age that lacked cameras and the internet. Some priapic examples are in the Selçuk museum.