Photo taken on Aug. 18, 2011 shows the arches and stelae in Ephesus, Turkey. Ephesus (Ancient Greek Ephesos, Turkish Efes) was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, near present-day Selcuk, Izmir Province, Turkey. It is one of the biggest and best-preserved Roman cities in the world. In the Roman period, it was for many years the second largest city of the Roman Empire, ranking behind Rome, the empire's capital. Ephesus had a population of more than 250,000 in the 1st century BC, which also made it the second largest city in the world. [Xinhua/Ma Yan]