Photo © 1994 GM Gershon
This Web site is named after the great Celsus Library in Ephesus, Turkey. This library was one of the great repositories of knowledge in the Roman Empire and held over 12,000 hand-written scrolls.
The library was built in 110 A.D. by Council Gaius Julius Aquila as a memorial for Tiberious Celsus Polemeanus, his father. Construction was finished in 135 A.D.
Photo © 1994 GM Gershon
This magnificent facility appears as a two-story building from the front and contained three stories of storage inside. A second set of walls surrounded the library to control humidity and temperature changes. The inside of the library was 11 by 16.7 m. It burned almost completely in the third century A.D. and was rebuilt.
The reading room was located inside the middle of the building, surrounded by storage space over-looking the main saloon. The librarians provided the hand-written scrolls to readers. An Auditorium was later built in front of the library and was used by politicians, artists, and public speakers.
This site is a library of a different design. You can access the contents yourself and the reading room is distributed in cyberspace. The scrolls are now made of a less tangible, yet more durable material. Hopefully, they are of value and interest to its modern visitors just as the Celsus Library's contents were of value to its visitors nearly two millenniums ago.
Last Changed: 07-May-1998
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Contact: Webmaster@Celsus.Net