House of the Virgin Mary
— — a small stone room that keeps its own quiet.
Not only on a wall.
“A modest stone chapel on Mount Koressos, seven kilometres above the ruins of Ephesus. Local tradition, supported by the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich and a French survey in 1881, holds this as the last home of Mary, mother of Jesus. Cypress and pine close the road in. People come to the spring below the house, take water in small bottles, tie cloth wishes to a low wall, and walk back down the hill without saying much. Four popes have visited. The room itself is plain. from the studio
House of the Virgin Mary, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Meryem Ana Evi sits on the slope of Mount Koressos (Bülbüldağ), about seven kilometres from the ancient city of Ephesus in İzmir Province, western Türkiye. The shrine is a small T-shaped stone building, restored in the twentieth century around what tradition identifies as a first-century foundation. The site was identified in 1881 by Abbé Julien Gouyet, following the recorded visions of the German mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich, and confirmed by a 1891 expedition from the Lazarist mission in İzmir. Pope Paul VI visited in 1967, John Paul II in 1979, and Benedict XVI in 2006. The Vatican has not formally pronounced on the authenticity of the house but permits pilgrimage.
The structure is small, roughly nine metres by six, built of rough field stone and patched with red brick at the upper courses. Below the foundations, archaeologists in the early twentieth century recorded charcoal from a much older hearth, consistent with first-century habitation. The single doorway leads into a vaulted main room with a niche where an icon of Mary stands; a smaller side chamber is held by tradition to be where she slept. Outside, a low wall of stones and a wishing wall of cloth strips have grown around a spring channelled into three small taps. Pilgrims drink from the spring and tie a knot.
The shrine sits inside a small park managed by the municipality of Selçuk and is open daily; a modest entrance fee covers parking and maintenance. The road climbs about seven kilometres from the Ephesus archaeological site through pine forest, with the last stretch closed to coaches above the lower lot. Inside the house silence is requested and photography is not permitted. Mass is celebrated each year on 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption, drawing Catholic and Orthodox pilgrims as well as Muslim visitors, for whom Maryam is also honoured. The nearest airport is İzmir Adnan Menderes, about an hour to the north.