In Ephesus, C. Julius had his library built in honour of his father C. Celsus, the General Governor of the Province of Asia, in the year 135 AD. You climb up to the salon of the library by nine stairs. Here, there used to be four statues symbolizing Justice, Virtue, etc. The niches in the walls were used for books. In front of the niches there were low Ionian pillars, made into the shape of a table. The inscription at the northern end of the library in Latin, and another inscription at the southern end in Greek, are about Celsus and his son, Aquila. The grave of Celsus is at the back. You can go to the grave after you climb down the stairs on the right-hand side, passing through a winding narrow corridor of 15 m. You will see a beautiful sarcophagus made of white marble, with a length of 2.5 m. The face of this sarcophagus is adorned with sculptures of snakes together with sculptures of Eros, Nike and Medusa. Under the stairs leading to Marble Street, is a newly discovered sarcophagus belonging to the Byzantine period. A lead plate at the bottom, on which the corpse lay, was found.

The marble street is the main street of the city: it has a remarkable sewer. The street leads to the Koressos Gate in the north, and to the Magnesia Gate in the south, and from there it leads to the Seven Sleepers and the Temple of Artemis. There were columns 8 m. high, on which graceful marbles were sculpted with friezes, along the left side of the Marble Street, for its length of 4 km.

The Serapis temple was built in dedication to Serapis, one of the Egyptian gods, in the 2nd century A. D. Its facade once reached up to 29 m. including the pedestals and capitals. Three columns out of a total of eight were really colossal, that is, they were 15 m. high and weighed 50 tons. Each one was ornamented with three Corinthian capitals made from one block of marble.

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