Library of Celsus

The Library of Celsus is among the best-preserved Roman civic monuments in the world, completed around 125 AD in the ancient city of Ephesus. It was commissioned by Gaius Julius Aquila as a funerary monument to his father Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, governor of the province of Asia — Celsus himself lies in a marble sarcophagus beneath the building's apse, an unusual fusion of public library and private mausoleum. At its peak, the library held an estimated 12,000 scrolls, making it the third largest library in the ancient world after Alexandria and Pergamon. Excavated from 1903 onward and reconstructed between 1970 and 1978 by Austrian archaeologists, the two-story colonnaded facade with its carved niches and pedimented windows is today one of Turkey's most visited archaeological sites. Evening visits reward with dramatic low-angle light across the carved stonework.