Ephesus was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the coast of Ionia, near present-day Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey. It was one of the 12 cities of the Ionian League during the Classical Greek era. In the Roman period, Ephesus had a population of more than 250,000 in the 1st century BC, which served to make it one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean world. -- Wikipedia