Depart with your professionally-trained guide and drive to the House of Virgin Mary. It is known with certainty that the Virgin Mary went to Ephesus and lived there for some time. Whether she died in Ephesus is not confirmed and her final resting place is still contested. In the late 1800s, a stigmatized German nun who had never been to Ephesus had a vision of the House of the Virgin Mary and described it in detail to the German writer Clemens Brentano who later published a book about it. In 1891 Paul, Superior of the Lazarists from Izmir read about her vision and found a little building which corresponded with Emmerich's descriptions. Although the foundations were from the 1st-Century A.D., the house itself dates only back to the 5th-century A.D. The site was officially declared a shrine of the Roman Catholic Church in 1896, and since then it has become a popular place of pilgrimage. Popes have visited the shrine in 1967 and again in 2006.

Your next stop is the Ancient site of Ephesus, the greatest port city in Asia Minor during the years of the Roman Empire. Upon arrival, you and your guide will enter through the upper (Magnesia) Gate and walk down through the site. You will visit the Forum, the Odeon, the Library of Celsus, the Thermal Baths of Scolastika, view the remains of the main Agora, and see the Great Theater, built in the Greek era and reconstructed in the Roman period.

After your visit to Ephesus, enjoy a typical Turkish lunch at a nearby restaurant. After lunch, guests will have the opportunity to see a Turkish carpet demonstration before returning to Izmir.