Temple of Artemis

There is almost nothing left, and that is rather the point. The temple was four times the footprint of the Parthenon, built and rebuilt over centuries, burned down on the night Alexander the Great was born — and today one column stands in a marshy field with a stork nesting on top of it.

It takes ten minutes to see. Go anyway, ideally with the museum fresh in your mind, and stand at the fence looking back towards Ayasuluk Hill: you get the mosque, the basilica and the castle stacked up behind the column, which is fifteen hundred years of the same valley in one view.