Ephesus stood at the mouth of the Cayster River on the western coast of Asia Minor — the principal harbor city of the Roman province of Asia and, after Rome and Alexandria, one of the three largest cities of the empire in the first century AD. Acts 19 places Paul there for two years and three months, longer than at any other site in his recorded ministry. The Austrian Archaeological Institute has excavated continuously since 1895; the site is now a Turkish state archaeological park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Three structures of the Pauline city are recoverable in detail. The Theatre of Ephesus — a 25,000-seat hillside auditorium opening onto the Arcadian Way — is the setting of Acts 19:23–41, where Demetrius the silversmith, fearing the loss of his trade in naoi argyroi (silver shrines of Artemis), assembled the craftsmen and "the whole city was filled with the confusion, and they rushed together into the theatre." The chant Luke records — "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" — was the cultic acclamation of the city's patron goddess and is independently attested in dozens of inscriptions from the site. The Library of Celsus, dedicated around AD 117 to the senator Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, stands restored at the southern end of the Curetes Street; its facade is one of the most photographed monuments of the Roman East. The Temple of Artemis — the Artemision, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World — survives only as foundations and a single re-erected column in a marsh outside the city, but its scale (roughly 137 by 69 meters, four times the footprint of the Parthenon) is recoverable from the ground plan. Ephesus is also the city addressed in Revelation 2:1–7 and the seat of John's traditional later residence and grave; the Basilica of St. John on Ayasoluk Hill above the ancient site preserves the Byzantine memorial of that tradition. Sources: Helmut Koester, ed., Ephesos: Metropolis of Asia (Harvard Theological Studies, 1995); Paul Trebilco, The Early Christians in Ephesus from Paul to Ignatius (Eerdmans, 2004); Austrian Archaeological Institute, Forschungen in Ephesos series (1906–present); Acts 19; Revelation 2:1–7.
Ephesus provides the most archaeologically recoverable urban context for any Pauline ministry. The Theatre where Acts 19 locates the silversmiths' riot, inscriptional attestation of the Artemis cult, and the massive Artemision ground plan together allow direct material correlation between the New Testament narrative and a precisely excavated first-century AD Roman city.