Ancient Ankara: Exploring Roman Ancyra and Byzantine Heritage

Most visitors to Turkey barely glance at Ankara, treating it as a transit stop between Istanbul and Cappadocia. That’s a genuine mistake. Turkey’s capital – sitting in the heart of the Anatolian plateau – carries one of the most layered ancient identities of any city in the region. Long before it became the political seat of the Turkish Republic, it was Roman Ancyra, the capital of the province of Galatia, a prosperous city of baths, temples, and colonnaded streets. Before that, it was Phrygian, Hittite, and Phrygian again. The Byzantine era added churches and councils of theological significance that reverberate in Christian history to this day. Ankara rewards slow, curious travelers who come looking for these layers – and this guide will help you find every one of them.

The Temple of Augustus and the Monumentum Ancyranum

If you visit only one ancient site in Ankara, make it the Temple of Augustus, tucked inside the old quarter of Ulus and attached to what is now the Hacı Bayram Mosque. The temple was originally built in the 2nd century BC as a Phrygian or Galatian sanctuary, then rededicated to Rome and Augustus around 25 BC when the region became a Roman province. It is remarkably well-preserved – two exterior walls still stand to considerable height, their creamy limestone blocks fitted with the obsessive precision the Romans brought to everything they built.

But what makes this temple genuinely extraordinary has less to do with its architecture than with its walls. Carved into the inner sanctum (the cella) in both Latin and Greek is the Res Gestae Divi Augusti – the “Deeds of the Divine Augustus,” a first-person account of Augustus’s achievements and legacy that he composed near the end of his life and ordered inscribed across the empire. The Ankara version is the most complete surviving copy in existence. Scholars call it the Monumentum Ancyranum – the monument of Ancyra – and it is essentially the original Roman imperial press release, describing military campaigns, public works, the restoration of the Republic, and the careful self-mythologizing of the first emperor. You can walk right up to the cella wall and read it, letters still sharp after two millennia.

The juxtaposition with the adjoining Ottoman mosque is startling and entirely Ankara. Worshippers stream through a gate that brushes against Roman stonework. Pigeons nest in Latin inscriptions. A tea seller parks his cart in the shadow of columns. There is no rope, no souvenir stand, no entrance fee. The temple simply sits there as it always has, absorbed into the fabric of the neighborhood.

Spend time with the Latin text even if you can’t read it – the physicality of those carved letters, the knowledge of what they say, makes this one of the most moving encounters with Roman history available anywhere in the world. The adjacent Greek inscription on the north outer wall is slightly less complete but still legible in long stretches. Bring a good Roman history book or download a translation before you visit.

Ankara Citadel and the Roman Urban Footprint

Rising sharply above Ulus is the Ankara Citadel (Ankara Kalesi), a Byzantine and Seljuk fortification that sits on the exact hill the Romans used as the civic core of Ancyra. The citadel’s outer walls were built and rebuilt by multiple empires, but their foundations are Roman, and as you walk the ramparts you are essentially tracing the perimeter of the ancient city.

The site divides into two enclosures – the inner citadel (iç kale) at the top and the outer citadel (dış kale) below. The inner section is now a residential neighborhood of extraordinary character: narrow cobbled lanes, Ottoman timber houses leaning at precarious angles, cats sleeping on Roman column drums repurposed as doorsteps, and the occasional excavation trench where archaeologists have found Roman-era storage jars and mosaic floors beneath the foundations of later buildings. Residents still live here, which gives the place a lived-in dignity that sanitized archaeological parks rarely achieve.

Scattered through the area just below the citadel are fragments of Ancyra’s Roman street plan – a stretch of Roman road exposed near the base of the hill, column bases that once lined the main colonnaded street, and the ruins of a large Roman bath complex (the Roma Hamamı or Roman Baths) a short walk from the Temple of Augustus. The Roman bath ruins are fenced but easily viewed and surprisingly extensive: the hypocaust pillars that supported the heated floors remain in place, giving a clear picture of how the structure worked. An information board notes that these were among the largest baths in Roman Anatolia.

At the top of the inner citadel, find the viewing terrace near the Ak Minare mosque. On a clear morning you can see the Anatolian plateau stretching to the horizon – the same landscape Roman soldiers and merchants looked out over when Ancyra was a military and trade hub on the roads between the Aegean coast and the eastern frontier.

Byzantine Ancyra – Churches, Councils, and the Christian Legacy

Ancyra’s importance to early Christianity is underappreciated even by specialists in Byzantine history. The city hosted the Council of Ancyra in AD 314 – one of the first major church councils after Constantine’s Edict of Milan legalized Christianity – which produced a series of canonical rules still referenced in Orthodox Christian practice. This makes Ankara a site of foundational significance for the early church, predating the more famous Council of Nicaea by eleven years.

Physical evidence of Byzantine Ancyra is harder to find than Roman remains, partly because so much was demolished, converted, or built over during the Seljuk and Ottoman periods. However, several significant traces survive. The most visible is the Column of Julian, a 15-meter Corinthian column standing alone in a small square near the Temple of Augustus. It was erected to mark a visit by the Emperor Julian in AD 362 – Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor – but the column’s smooth marble shaft and its prominent placement in the urban fabric made it a landmark throughout the Byzantine period and into the present day. A stork nest crowns it most of the year, which the locals treat as a good omen.

More accessible is the Arslanhane Mosque (Ahi Şerafettin Mosque), which was converted from a Byzantine church in the 13th century. Its wooden ceiling and interior columns – many of them clearly Roman in origin, borrowed from earlier structures – speak to the layered repurposing that defines this city. The mosque’s stone carvings incorporate what appear to be Byzantine decorative motifs, frozen mid-transformation.

For those with a serious interest in Byzantine history, the Ankara Ethnography Museum holds a modest but useful collection of Byzantine artifacts, primarily architectural fragments and ceramics recovered from city excavations, which help fill in what the street-level evidence cannot fully show.

The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations

No visit to ancient Ankara is complete without a full half-day at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations (Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi), housed in a restored 15th-century Ottoman covered market (bedesten) at the base of the citadel hill. It won the Council of Europe’s Museum of the Year award in 1997 and deserves its reputation as one of the finest archaeological museums anywhere in the world.

The collection is organized chronologically and spans the full sweep of Anatolian prehistory – from the Paleolithic through the Chalcolithic, early Bronze Age, Assyrian trading colony period, Hittite Empire, Phrygian kingdom, Urartian culture, and into the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The Hittite gallery alone justifies the visit: massive stone orthostat reliefs from Carchemish and other Hittite cities line the walls, their images of gods, kings, and hunting scenes among the most powerful ancient sculpture you’ll encounter outside Cairo or Athens.

For visitors focused on Roman and Byzantine Ancyra, the museum provides essential context. The Roman-era section includes inscriptions, coins, portrait busts, and architectural elements that flesh out what life in Ancyra actually looked like beyond the ruins. There is a partial reconstruction showing how the Temple of Augustus would have appeared in its full Roman form, which helps enormously when you walk over to see the real thing.

The Phrygian gallery deserves special attention because Ancyra was a major Phrygian city before Rome arrived – the famous tumuli of Gordion are within day-trip distance, and the museum holds key finds from those excavations, including incredibly fine wooden furniture from royal burials, preserved through millennia in sealed chamber tombs. The craftsmanship is breathtaking and almost impossible to believe is 2,700 years old.

Allow at least three hours. The museum café in the courtyard is a good spot for lunch, and the museum shop carries serious academic publications on Anatolian archaeology not easily found elsewhere.

The Old Quarter of Ulus – Walking the Ancient City

All of Ankara’s major ancient sites cluster within the Ulus district, the oldest part of the city and the neighborhood most visitors skip in favor of the modern Kızılay and Çankaya areas. This is exactly why Ulus rewards exploration – it feels unhurried, slightly rough around the edges, and genuinely Turkish in a way that the capital’s newer neighborhoods sometimes don’t.

The quarter is walkable. From the Roman Baths to the Temple of Augustus is about five minutes on foot. From there to the Column of Julian takes another five. The citadel entrance gate is a ten-minute walk uphill from the temple. This compact geography means you can see everything in a single focused morning or afternoon, with time left for wandering.

What makes the walking interesting beyond the monuments is the urban texture itself. Streets narrow into alleys. Copper- and ironworkers still operate workshops in the bazaar area below the citadel, hammering out trays and tools as they have for centuries. The Çıkrıkçılar Yokuşu (Coppersmiths’ Slope) that climbs toward the citadel gate is lined with metalworking shops where you can buy hand-hammered copperware at prices far below anything in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar.

Look down as you walk – the pavements in the oldest lanes often contain repurposed Roman and Byzantine stone fragments, used as fill or surfacing during later construction. A column drum here, a carved architectural block there. The city recycles itself constantly, and in Ulus you see the evidence of that process across every century simultaneously.

Eating and Drinking in the Old City

Ankara has a distinct food culture that differs meaningfully from Istanbul’s. The city is proud of a few specific dishes, and Ulus is the right place to find them in their most authentic form.

Ankara tava is the signature preparation – slow-cooked lamb or veal with vegetables, baked in a clay dish and served directly from the oven. It’s a hearty, warmly spiced dish that fits the Anatolian plateau climate perfectly. Several lokanta (casual lunch restaurants) in and around Ulus serve it as a daily special, and portions are enormous.

The city is also famous for its particular approach to döner – Ankara döner is drier, more thinly sliced, and typically served on bread with minimal garnish compared to the Istanbul version. You’ll find small döner counters in Ulus serving workers and students at lunch, and the quality is consistently high.

For breakfast, the covered market area near Ulus Square has stalls selling simit (sesame bread rings), börek (flaky pastry filled with cheese or spinach), and strong tea. This is a genuine local breakfast scene, not a tourist-facing one.

In the evenings, the restaurants along Kale Kapısı (the citadel gate road) and in the restored houses inside the inner citadel serve mezes, grilled meats, and Anatolian wines in settings of genuine historic atmosphere – Ottoman timber interiors, terrace views over the old city lights, and the sound of the call to prayer echoing off ancient walls.

Ankara is not a late-night city in the way Istanbul is, but the Ulus restaurant scene stays lively until around ten or eleven. After dinner, the tea houses scattered through the quarter serve as the social core – pull up a plastic stool, order a glass of çay, and watch the neighborhood settle into its evening rhythms.

Getting Around Ankara

Ankara is served by Esenboğa Airport, about 28 kilometers north of the city center. The Havalimani Shuttle (airport bus, run by Belko Air) connects the airport to the main ASTI bus terminal and to several city-center stops, running every 30 minutes approximately, with a journey time of 35-45 minutes depending on traffic. Taxis from the airport are metered and reliable but considerably more expensive.

High-speed train connections to Istanbul (via the YHT high-speed rail, approximately 4.5 hours) and to other Turkish cities make Ankara very accessible by rail. Ankara’s main train station, Ankara Gar, is in the city center and well connected to the metro.

Within the city, the Ankara Metro (Ankaray and the M1/M2/M3/M4 lines) is clean, frequent, and inexpensive. The M1 line is particularly useful for visitors, connecting Kızılay (the modern center) with Ulus. A single metro trip costs a few Turkish lira and uses an Ankara Kart (reloadable transit card, available at metro stations). For the ancient sites clustered in Ulus, the metro gets you close and walking covers the rest. Taxis are plentiful and cheap by Western standards – use the meter, or agree on a price before getting in for very short trips.

Day Trips That Deepen the Ancient Story

Ankara’s position in central Anatolia makes it an excellent base for ancient site day trips that extend the Roman and pre-Roman narrative significantly.

Gordion

Gordion, the ancient Phrygian capital, lies about 90 kilometers west of Ankara – roughly an hour’s drive. This is the city of King Midas and the Gordian Knot, and it preserves one of the most impressive concentrations of ancient burial mounds (tumuli) in the world. The Great Tumulus, traditionally associated with King Midas (or a Phrygian king of his era), is among the largest ancient burial mounds ever excavated. Inside, the intact wooden burial chamber – a log cabin within a mountain of earth – held the deceased with extraordinary wooden furniture, much of it now in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. An on-site museum at Gordion is modest but well-organized, and guided tours can be arranged from Ankara. The site is rarely crowded and has a melancholy, windswept atmosphere that fits the subject matter perfectly.

Hattusha

The former capital of the Hittite Empire, Hattusha (also spelled Hattusa), is a UNESCO World Heritage Site about 200 kilometers east of Ankara. The drive takes roughly 2.5 hours, making it a long day trip but a very worthwhile one. The scale of the ruins is staggering – massive city walls with corbeled tunnels still intact, rock-cut sanctuaries, the famous Lion Gate and Sphinx Gate, and the temple complex at the heart of the ancient city. Nearby Yazılıkaya, an outdoor rock sanctuary with extraordinary carved reliefs of Hittite deities, takes another 30 minutes from Hattusha and should be included. The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara prepares you beautifully for Hattusha; visiting the museum first makes the ruins significantly more comprehensible.

Çatalhöyük

For Neolithic history, Çatalhöyük – one of the world’s first urban settlements, dating to around 7500 BC – is about 250 kilometers south of Ankara near Konya. It’s a stretch for a day trip but possible with an early start. The site’s visitor center is excellent, and watching archaeologists work in the active excavation trenches gives you a sense of the sheer antiquity of Anatolian civilization. Combined with Ankara’s museum and ruins, a visit here creates one of the most complete ancient history experiences available anywhere in the world.

Planning Your Visit – Seasons, Practicalities, and Priorities

Ankara sits at around 850 meters elevation on the Anatolian plateau, which gives it a harsher climate than Istanbul. Summers are hot and dry – temperatures regularly hit 35°C (95°F) in July and August, making morning visits to the outdoor sites essential. Winters are genuinely cold, with snow, and some outdoor sites become slippery. The most comfortable times to visit are late April through June and September through October, when temperatures are mild, light is beautiful, and tourist crowds are minimal to nonexistent.

Ankara receives a tiny fraction of Istanbul’s tourist traffic, which is both its challenge and its great advantage. You will rarely share the Temple of Augustus with more than a handful of other visitors. There are no ticket queues, no timed entry slots, no audio guide rentals at every gate. What you get instead is direct, unmediated contact with the past, which is a rarer experience than it should be.

Entry to most outdoor ancient sites in Ulus (the Temple of Augustus, the Column of Julian, the Roman Baths) is free. The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations charges a modest entry fee, covered by the Turkish Museum Pass if you hold one. The Ankara Ethnography Museum charges separately. Budget accommodation is available throughout the city, with better options concentrated in the Kızılay and Çankaya districts – a short metro or taxi ride from Ulus.

Two full days devoted to ancient Ankara – one for the Ulus sites and museum, one for a Gordion day trip – gives you a genuinely deep engagement with the Roman and pre-Roman layers. Three days adds Hattusha and changes the trip from a visit to an immersion. Pack comfortable walking shoes, carry water during summer, and bring your intellectual curiosity: this is not a city where the sights are handed to you on a tourist platter. You find them, piece them together, and leave with an understanding of Anatolian history that Istanbul, for all its grandeur, cannot give you.

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📷 Featured image by Merve Selcuk Simsek on Unsplash.