Library of Celsus

The two-storey marble facade of a Roman library at Ephesus that once held some 12,000 scrolls.

It was ordered in the 110s CE by a Roman consul named Tiberius Julius Aquila Polemaeanus as a memorial to his father, Celsus, a former governor of the province of Asia. It was finished under Emperor Hadrian. The library was the third-largest in the Greco-Roman world, after those of Alexandria and Pergamum, and is believed to have held about 12,000 scrolls.

Who was Celsus?

Celsus had a successful career in the Roman army and government. He was elected consul in 92 CE, was one of the first men from the Greek-speaking eastern provinces to hold that office, and later served as governor of Asia.

After he died, his son built the library in his honour. An inscription says Celsus left a legacy of 25,000 denarii to pay for books. Celsus himself lies in a marble coffin in a crypt beneath the library.

What happened to it?

The library's inside was about 180 square metres. A fire destroyed the inside and its scrolls in 262 CE, caused either by an earthquake or by a Gothic invasion. Later an earthquake in the 10th or 11th century toppled the front.

The front lay in ruins for centuries, until archaeologists stood it up again. Sources give different dates: some say work began in 117 and finished in 135, while others say only that it was completed in Hadrian's reign.

On the globe

The model shows the ornate two-storey marble front with its columns and statues in niches.