A city of the first to third centuries CE
What most visitors see at Ephesus is a Roman city, and mostly one built or rebuilt between the first and third centuries CE, when the city was wealthy and the provincial capital of Asia. Earlier Greek buildings were adapted and sometimes replaced, and later earthquakes and reuse changed the picture again. This article follows the main Roman monuments along the central route from the theatre toward the upper city.
The Library of Celsus
The Library of Celsus is the best-known building at the site. It was built in the early second century CE, usually dated to roughly 110-135 CE, as a monument to Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, a Roman senator who had served as governor of the province of Asia. Inscriptions indicate that his son completed it. Celsus himself was buried in a burial chamber beneath the ground floor, so the building was both a library and a tomb, an unusual combination.
The two-storey facade faces the street, with paired columns, niches and statues that represent virtues such as wisdom and knowledge. The statues visible today are copies, with the originals kept in a Vienna museum. Inside there were wall niches that held scrolls in cupboards, and a gallery above. Figures such as 12,000 scrolls are often quoted, but this is an estimate, and the true number is uncertain. Compared with great collections of the Hellenistic age, as in the story of the Pergamon library, this was a more modest civic institution, though it still played a clear social role.
The interior was destroyed, probably by fire and earthquake in the later Roman period, and the facade collapsed in a later earthquake. Austrian archaeologists reassembled it from the fallen pieces in the 1970s, a method called anastylosis. The result is largely original stone, but with modern supports and missing parts filled in.
The Great Theatre
The Great Theatre is cut into the slope of Panayir Hill and faces the harbour road. A theatre existed here in the Hellenistic period, and the Romans enlarged and rebuilt it, giving it a multi-storey stage building. A figure of around 25,000 seats is often quoted, though estimates differ, and some of that depends on how crowded the benches are assumed to be.
The theatre was more than a place for plays. It was the largest covered or open meeting space in the city, used for assemblies, public announcements and gladiatorial shows in some periods. The Acts of the Apostles places a riot of silversmiths here. For comparison with the Greek form, the history of theater architecture shows how Roman builders changed the older design.
Streets, fountains and temples
The Curetes Street runs uphill from the library area and was lined with statues, honorific inscriptions, shops and public buildings. Along it stand:
- The Temple of Hadrian, a small, richly carved building from the second century CE with a decorated arched entrance.
- The Fountain of Trajan, a large nymphaeum with a statue of the emperor, though details of its decoration are debated.
- The Baths of Varius and the Scholastica Baths, which show the range of bathing facilities in the city. For the social side of these buildings, see the Roman public baths.
- The Upper Agora and the Prytaneion, the civic and ceremonial centre.
The Marble Road links the theatre to the library area, and a colonnaded street ran from the theatre to the harbour. Water arrived through aqueducts, which fed the fountains and baths. The engineering behind such systems is described under Roman aqueducts.
The Terrace Houses
On the slope across the Curetes Street are the Terrace Houses, often called the Hanghäuser. They are a group of urban residences of the wealthy, built on stepped terraces, with courtyards, mosaic floors, marble paneling and painted plaster. The Austrian team has covered the houses with protective roofs. Occupation spans a long period, from about the first century BCE, with rebuilding after earthquakes, into the seventh century CE.
These houses are valuable because they show how ordinary rich families lived, something harder to learn from public monuments. The finds include wall paintings, furniture fittings and kitchen debris. In comparison with houses elsewhere, they resemble the Roman domus in design, though with local adaptations for the slope. Poorer residents in Roman cities more often lived in Roman apartment blocks, which leave far less trace.
What is original and what is restored
Visitors should know that many of the best-looking views are products of modern work. The library facade, the Temple of Hadrian and parts of the theatre incorporate rebuilt sections. The restoration followed accepted principles of using original stone where possible, but it still means that what looks complete is partly interpretation. Archaeologists also continue to refine dates, since many buildings were modified over centuries.
Reading the city as a whole
Together, these buildings show how a provincial elite displayed its wealth. Wealthy citizens paid for monuments, gave public banquets and carved their names on the stone. The library facade, the fountains and the street statues are all forms of civic advertising. Much of what we can say about who paid for what comes from inscriptions, which makes epigraphy as important as the architecture itself.