Ephesus By Locals

Choose your walk

Private tours, built like a local’s day

Everything below is private — your group only, with the licensed guide, air-conditioned vehicle, professional driver, pickup and parking fees included. Day tours start from €33 per person for groups of 8 or more; smaller groups get a private quote. Any group size: we guide groups of 1 to 52 people in one coach, and for larger groups we arrange several guides and coaches. We once ran a week-long tour around Turkey for 200 people in five buses at the same time. Small or large, your group is simple and easy for us. And on every tour that visits Ephesus, lunch is now included too. Entrance tickets are collected in advance with our priority pass, so you skip the queue and pay only the official price (on Selçuk in a Day the tickets are included). One exception lives at the bottom of the list: a guiding-only service for people who just need the voice.

Seven days, and one guiding-only service

Private Ephesus Tour

The whole ancient city with a private tour guide who has walked it a few thousand times and still isn't bored.

The flagship · From €33 per person (groups of 8+) · private tour

Ephesus Walking Tour at Opening Hour

There is a version of Ephesus almost nobody sees: the one before the ships come in.

The early one · From €33 per person (groups of 8+) · private tour

Ephesus Tour for Cruise Guests

Your driver waits at the port exit and your guide has the whole day planned backwards from your all-aboard time.

The port-call one · From €33 per person (groups of 8+) · private tour

Ephesus & Şirince Tour

Marble in the morning, vine shade in the afternoon, and a driver handling the hill road in between.

The village day · From €33 per person (groups of 8+) · private tour

Selçuk in a Day

Selçuk is where the guides live, shop and drink their çay.

The local one · From €39 per person (groups of 8+) · tickets included

Ephesus Night Tour

Through the summer Ephesus stays open after dark on four nights a week — and surprisingly few visitors know it.

The night one · seasonal · Private quote

Bodrum to Ephesus, in a single day

Yes, it can be done from Bodrum — at your own pace, with your own car and driver.

The long one · From €44 per person (groups of 8+) · private tour

Hire Ephesian Guide for Ephesus Tour

Already have your transport sorted? This is the one service we sell without a car: a licensed Ephesian guide for your whole group, waiting for you at the Ephesus gate, with a special quote by date and season.

Guiding only · the one exception · Special quote

How booking works

You write to us with a date and who’s coming. A licensed guide — not a booking system — replies with an honest plan and the exact price for your group size. On the day, everything about the moving of you — car, driver, parking, timing — is ours and already included, and so is lunch on any tour that visits Ephesus. Entrance tickets we buy ahead of time with our agency priority pass, so you never queue for them — you pay the official Ministry price and we add nothing to it. If you want the long version of how to choose any guide well, read our pillar on hiring an Ephesus tour guide, and our tour FAQ answers the questions guests send before they book.

Lunch is included from 2026

Our policy changed this year and it is worth saying plainly: if a tour visits Ephesus, lunch is in the price. A proper sit-down Turkish table — mezes, hot bread, a main, çay — with time to enjoy every plate. It applies to the private day, the opening-hour walk, the cruise day and the Şirince day. Only personal drinks are settled by you. This is what the table looks like.

Every tour above except Selçuk in a Day walks the Ephesus Ancient City with a licensed guide, and most can add the House of the Virgin Mary in the hills above it. Ask us about lunch too — on this coast it is not an interruption to the day, it is part of it.

The ships we meet

We bring people back on time.

Guests from these cruise lines have walked Ephesus with us for over twenty years. Not one of them has missed a ship — we plan every shore day backwards from your all-aboard time.

Logos of the cruise lines whose guests we guide at Ephesus, including Royal Caribbean, MSC, Celebrity, Princess, Viking, Cunard, Holland America and Costa

ONE MESSAGE, ONE PLAN

Tell us your date.
We’ll tell you the plan.

A licensed local guide replies personally — usually the same day, from info@ephesusbylocals.com.

Plan my day with a guide

TÜRSAB license 15746 · Nothing paid in advance · Skip-the-line tickets held for you

A 141 Journeys website

One small agency in Kuşadası. Eleven websites, each written by the guides who actually work that ground.

141 Journeys is the family name over all of it — one licensed Turkish travel agency (TÜRSAB No. 15746), twenty years of guiding, and a simple idea: travelers should hear about a place from the people who live in it. Here are our sister sites.

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