Library of Celsus

The Library of Celsus (Βιβλιοθήκη του Κέλσου) is an ancient Roman building in Ephesus, Anatolia, today located nearby the modern town of Selçuk, in the İzmir Province of western Turkey. The building was commissioned in the years 110s CE by a consul of the Roman Empire, Tiberius Julius Aquila Polemaeanus, as a funerary monument for his father Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, former proconsul of Asia, and completed during the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, sometime after Aquila's death. The Library of Celsus is considered an architectural marvel, and is one of the only remaining examples of great libraries of the ancient world located in the Roman Empire. It was the third-largest library in the Greco-Roman world behind only those of Alexandria and Pergamum, believed to have held around 12,000 scrolls. Celsus is buried in a crypt beneath the library in a decorated marble sarcophagus. The interior measured roughly 180 square metres (2,000 square feet). The interior of the library and its contents were destroyed in a fire that resulted either from an earthquake or a Gothic invasion in 262 CE, and the façade by an earthquake in the 10th or 11th century. It lay in ruins for centuries until the façade was re-erected by archaeologists between 1970 and 1978. Classical Anatolia and Greece in the Roman era Celsus enjoyed a successful military and political career, having served as a commander in the Roman army before being elected to serve as a consul for the Roman Empire in 92 CE. Celsus, a Romanized Greek native of Sardis or Ephesus who belonged to a family of priests of Rome, was one of the first men from the Greek-speaking eastern provinces of the Roman Republic to serve as a consul, the highest elected office in Imperial Rome. He may have been the first Greek to become a Roman senator, however there is scholarly debate that this may or may not be true. He was later appointed as proconsul, or governor, of Asia, the Roman province that covered roughly the same area as modern-day Turkey.