The Library of Celsus is an ancient Roman building in Ephesus, Anatolia, now part of Selçuk, Turkey. The building was commissioned in the 110s A.D. by a consul, Gaius Julius Aquila, as a funerary monument for his father, former proconsul of Asia Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus,[1][2] and completed during the reign of Hadrian, sometime after Aquila's death.[3][4] The library is considered an architectural marvel, and is one of the only remaining examples of a library from the Roman Empire. The Library of Celsus was the third-largest library in the Roman world behind only Alexandria and Pergamum, believed to have held around twelve thousand scrolls.[5] Celsus is buried in a crypt beneath the library in a decorated marble sarcophagus.[6][7] The interior measured roughly 180 square metres (2,000 square feet).[8]
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 C.E.,[9][7] and the façade by an earthquake in the tenth or eleventh century.[10] It lay in ruins for centuries until the façade was re-erected by archaeologists between 1970 and 1978.~wiki
