6/29 Ephesus, Turkey

Located in a basin between two mountains, Ephesus was a harbor city which had been occupied at least as far back as the 11^th century BCE. It was 1 of 12 colonial cities that was part of the Ionian League, and was loosely based around the cult of Artemis, goddess of fertility (as well as the local fertility deity Cuipele). Like we do today with skyscrapers, each of these cities and others were competing to build the largest structures ever completed, one of which claimed to be – the Temple of Artemis; although nothing of it remains today. What is present now at this location is more of an updated Roman city, with foundations built on the more ancient ones. It was the capital of Asia Minor during their empire. At its height it was one of the largest cities in antiquity, capable of holding 250,000 people. As such, it has one of the largest theaters in antiquity as well. The main street that ran from the state agora to the public agora was known as the Street of Curetis, which cut through the city at a diagonal in opposition to most of the structures which were loosely built along the same N/S axis. On the outskirts of the city is located the Temple of Artemis, access to which was granted by a processional way which had great religious and spiritual importance it the city’s inhabitants.

I was very much intrigued by the Library of Celsus, which was built in the 2^nd century AD and reconstructed in the 1960’s, for its mannerist tendencies. We typically think of Mannerism to be connected to the High Renaissance in Florence and with Michelangelo, but this term refers to a specific movement rather than the concept of mannerism, like the difference between Modernism and modernism. The mannerist trend in this structure is one of using elements in a different way than you would expect, and to also play tricks with your sense of expected rhythm and structure that you typically expect. The façade of the building is reminiscent somewhat of the Olympic Theater by Palladio we saw in Vicenza, although it has a little more depth to its structural members. The rhythm of the columns is fairly regular across its façade, but what gets me about the structure is the upper level. The architects used the often-seen rounded/triangular pattern of pediments spanning the columns, yet left each column on either end exposed. It’s a little jarring to see at first, because what you’re expecting to see is the entablatures on the lower level replicated at the upper level, balancing out the façade. It’s interesting to see these derivations of classical architectural elements, yet every time we come upon a new structure we are tasked with categorizing it. Why is this? It’s not the architect’s intention to build in a certain style; it’s the work of historians that put all of the buildings we see into classes. Is it only necessary for purposes of describing buildings to future generations, or is there some larger societal benefit to putting them into groups? One possible advantage would be so that the client can accurately describe the type of building he/she wants. Another possibility might be for the benefit to pedagogy: as students of architecture being to study different periods in time, they can get a better understanding of the history of this field if they can relate one building to another through similar characteristics. I seem to have a tendency in this journal to ask a lot of rhetorical questions, but I find it helpful for me to ask them simply to get my thoughts out there. I don’t expect answers to them from the reader, but I feel it helps to start a debate on these large sweeping narratives that we are tasked to digest.