Temple of Augustus and Rome

About this place

The political last will of Rome's first emperor survives most completely not in Rome but on two marble walls in Ulus. Augustus dictated the Res Gestae, his own account of what he had done, and ordered it inscribed across the provinces; the Ankara copy is the fullest that has come down to us, Latin on the inner walls of the porch, Greek on the outside of the cella. The historian Mommsen called it the 'queen of inscriptions', and the site has sat on Turkey's UNESCO tentative list since 2016. The temple went up after Ankara became capital of the province of Galatia in the 20s BC, served as a Byzantine church, and in 1427 had the Hacı Bayram Veli Mosque built hard against it, so close that the two share a wall. That is the most striking thing about the view: an Ottoman minaret and tiled roof leaning on Roman masonry two thousand years old. Set expectations low. What remains is the cella and porch walls, and they lean badly enough that a heavy steel frame has propped them for well over a decade, with a metal fence keeping everyone at a distance. There is no entry, you cannot read the inscription from the railings, and what you actually see is a block of marble behind bars. Ten minutes is plenty; more adds nothing. The visit that works is the whole Hacı Bayram square: the tomb locals come to for prayers, the mosque that admits visitors between prayer times, the cafés and snack stalls around the edge, and the temple as part of the picture rather than the point of it. The square is flat and easy with a pushchair, and Ankara Castle is a gentle fifteen-minute uphill walk away, so do all three in one morning.