What Roman library in Ephesus, Turkey, was built in 117 AD and held over 12,000 scrolls?

The Roman library in Ephesus, built around AD 117 and associated with more than 12,000 scrolls, was the Library of Celsus.

The library stood in Ephesus, a major Greco-Roman city on the western coast of Asia Minor. Julius Aquila Polemaeanus commissioned it in memory of his father, Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, a wealthy Roman official and former governor of Asia. Celsus was buried in a decorated marble sarcophagus beneath the building, an unusual privilege for a library.

Completed in the early second century, the structure combined civic commemoration with public learning. Its reading room contained shelves or niches for papyrus rolls, and the façade featured elaborate columns and statues representing virtues such as wisdom and knowledge. Estimates commonly place its collection at about 12,000 scrolls, with some reconstructions suggesting capacity for as many as 16,000.

The Library of Celsus is often confused with the Library of Alexandria, but Alexandria was a much larger and older institution in Egypt. The Ephesus library’s interior and scrolls were destroyed by fire in AD 262; archaeologists reconstructed its famous façade between 1970 and 1978.