Vienna: Ephesos Museum @ Hofburg

Leaving Demel with sated tummies, we returned to the St Michael’s Wing of Hofburg, walked through the gate into what was once the castle inner square, out the back gate to Heldenplatz, and made our way to Hofburg’s Neue Burg [New Castle]. Built during the last expansion of the palace complex, the wing was completed in 1913. Housed inside are a number of museums … Ephesos, Ethnology, Arms and Armour, and Musical Instruments.

Our destination — the Ephesos Museum — was a surprise find from this morning. Why a surprise? Because we had no idea there was a museum in Vienna that exhibited archaeological finds from Ephesus, one of the most important cities of antiquity … one that served as the capital of the Roman Empire’s Asia Province. A little more than an hour’s drive from my hometown of İzmir, Türkiye, Mui and I have been to Ephesus numerous times and have noted the changes resulting from the continued excavation of the ruins.

Austrian archaeologists worked on the excavations starting in 1895. Thanks to a controversial agreement between the Ottoman Empire and Austria numerous high quality artifacts that the Austrian archaeologists recovered were removed to Vienna … gifts from Sultan Albdul Hamid to Emperor Franz Joseph. Initially on display at the Theseus Temple in the Volksgarten, the artifacts are now housed in the Ephesos Museum.

[Austria isn’t the only country where artifacts from cities of antiquity in Türkiye ended up outside the borders. The practice of allowing foreign excavations to remove artifacts is now generally banned by the 1907 Turkish Antiquities Law.]

Keeping the rest of our plans in mind, we opted to purchase admission just for the Ephesos Museum … €7.50/person (senior rate). Not sure I can say that what we paid was worth what we saw.

It’s not that the artifacts themselves were an issue. We saw some amazing pieces, including relief panels and fragments from one of the most important Ephesian monuments … the Parthian Monument. Rather, the problem was that the second floor of the museum was closed for a photo shoot and we were not made aware of that in advance. So, we missed out on seeing at least half of the museum. Anyway, we registered our dissatisfaction on our way out. Czytaj więcej