The region's history can be traced back to the
Bronze Age Hattic civilization, which was succeeded in the 2nd millennium BC by the
Hittites, in the 10th century BC by the
Phrygians, and later by the
Lydians,
Persians,
Greeks,
Galatians,
Romans,
Byzantines, and
Turks (the
Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, the
Ottoman Empire and finally republican
Türkiye).
Ancient history The oldest settlements in and around the city center of Ankara belonged to the
Hattic civilization which existed during the
Bronze Age and was gradually absorbed c. 2000 – 1700 BC by the
Indo-European Hittites. The city grew significantly in size and importance under the
Phrygians starting around 1000 BC, and experienced a large expansion following the mass migration from
Gordion, (the capital of
Phrygia), after an earthquake which severely damaged that city around that time. In Phrygian tradition, King
Midas was venerated as the founder of Ancyra, but
Pausanias mentions that the city was actually far older, which accords with present archeological knowledge. Phrygian rule was succeeded first by
Lydian and later by
Persian rule, though the strongly Phrygian character of the peasantry remained, as evidenced by the gravestones of the much later Roman period. Persian sovereignty lasted until the Persians' defeat at the hands of
Alexander the Great who conquered the city in 333 BC. Alexander came from
Gordion to Ankara and stayed in the city for a short period. After his death at
Babylon in 323 BC and the subsequent division of his empire among his generals, Ankara, and its environs fell into the share of
Antigonus. Another important expansion took place under the
Greeks of
Pontos who came there around 300 BC and developed the city as a trading center for the commerce of goods between the
Black Sea ports and Crimea to the north; Assyria, Cyprus, and Lebanon to the south; and Georgia, Armenia and Persia to the east. By that time, the city also took its name Ἄγκυρα (
Ánkyra, meaning
anchor in
Greek) which, in slightly modified form, provides the modern name of
Ankara.
Celtic history '' was a famous statue commissioned some time between 230 and 220 BC by King
Attalos I of
Pergamon to honor his victory over the
Celtic Galatians in
Anatolia. Roman marble copy of a
Hellenistic work of the late 3rd century BC, at the
Capitoline Museums, Rome. In 278 BC, the city, along with the rest of central Anatolia, was occupied by a
Celtic group, the
Galatians (Gauls), who were the first to make Ankara one of their main tribal centers, the headquarters of the
Tectosages tribe. Other centers were
Pessinus, today's Ballıhisar, for the
Trocmi tribe, and
Tavium, to the east of Ankara, for the
Tolistobogii tribe. The city was then known as
Ancyra. The Celtic element was probably relatively small in numbers; a warrior aristocracy which ruled over
Phrygian-speaking peasants. However, the
Celtic language continued to be spoken in Galatia for many centuries. At the end of the 4th century,
St. Jerome, a native of Dalmatia, observed that the language spoken around Ankara was very similar to that being spoken in the northwest of the Roman world near
Trier.
Roman history The city was subsequently passed under the control of the
Roman Empire. In 25 BC, Emperor
Augustus raised it to the status of a
polis and made it the capital city of the
Roman province of
Galatia. Ankara is famous for the
Monumentum Ancyranum (
Temple of Augustus and Rome) which contains the official record of the
Acts of Augustus, known as the
Res Gestae Divi Augusti, an inscription cut in marble on the walls of this temple. The ruins of Ancyra still furnish today valuable
bas-reliefs, inscriptions and other architectural fragments. Two other Galatian tribal centers,
Tavium near
Yozgat, and
Pessinus (Balhisar) to the west, near Sivrihisar, continued to be reasonably important settlements in the Roman period, but it was Ancyra that grew into a grand metropolis. An estimated 200,000 people lived in Ancyra in good times during the Roman Empire, a far greater number than was to be the case from after the fall of the Roman Empire until the early 20th century. The small
Ankara River ran through the center of the Roman town. It has now been covered and diverted, but it formed the northern boundary of the old town during the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods. Çankaya, the rim of the majestic hill to the south of the present city center, stood well outside the Roman city, but may have been a summer resort. In the 19th century, the remains of at least one
Roman villa or large house were still standing not far from where the Çankaya Presidential Residence stands today. To the west, the Roman city extended until the area of the Gençlik Park and Railway Station, while on the southern side of the hill, it may have extended downward as far as the site presently occupied by
Hacettepe University. It was thus a sizeable city by any standards and much larger than the Roman towns of
Gaul or
Britannia. Ancyra's importance rested on the fact that it was the junction point where the roads in northern Anatolia running north–south and east–west intersected, giving it major strategic importance for Rome's eastern frontier. was captured for the first time by the
Arabs of the
Rashidun Caliphate, under
Muawiyah, the future founder of the
Umayyad Caliphate. Ancyra was attacked without success by
Abbasid forces in 776 and in 798/99. In 805, Emperor
Nikephoros I (r. 802–811) strengthened its fortifications, a fact which probably saved it from sack during the
large-scale invasion of Anatolia by Caliph
Harun al-Rashid in the next year. The stone base for a statue, with an inscription describing Julian as "Lord of the whole world from the British Ocean to the barbarian nations", can still be seen, built into the eastern side of the inner circuit of the walls of Ankara Castle. The Column of Julian which was erected in honor of the emperor's visit to the city in 362 still stands today. In 375, Arian bishops met at Ancyra and deposed several bishops, among them
St. Gregory of Nyssa. In the late 4th century, Ancyra became something of an imperial
holiday resort. After
Constantinople became the
East Roman capital, emperors in the 4th and 5th centuries would retire from the humid summer weather on the
Bosporus to the drier mountain atmosphere of Ancyra.
Theodosius II (408–450) kept his court in Ancyra in the summers. Laws issued in Ancyra testify to the time they spent there. The
Metropolis of Ancyra continued to be a residential
see of the
Eastern Orthodox Church until the 20th century, with about 40,000 faithful, mostly Turkish-speaking, but that situation ended as a result of the 1923
Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations. The earlier
Armenian genocide put an end to the residential eparchy of Ancyra of the
Armenian Catholic Church, which had been established in 1850. It is also a titular metropolis of the
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Both the Ancient Byzantine Metropolitan archbishopric and the 'modern' Armenian eparchy are now listed by the
Catholic Church as
titular sees, with separate
apostolic successions.
Seljuk and Ottoman history After the
Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the
Seljuk Turks overran much of Anatolia. By 1073, the Turkish settlers had reached the vicinity of Ancyra, and the city was captured shortly after, at the latest by the time of the rebellion of
Nikephoros Melissenos in 1081. and Republican officials declared that the city's name is Ankara. . It was designed by Istanbul-born
Italian Levantine architect Giulio Mongeri and built between 1926 and 1929. After Ankara became the capital of the newly founded Republic of Turkey, new development divided the city into an old section, called
Ulus, and a new section, called
Yenişehir. Ancient buildings reflecting Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman history and narrow winding streets mark the old section. The new section, now centered on
Kızılay Square, has the trappings of a more modern city: wide streets, hotels, theaters, shopping malls, and high-rises. Government offices and foreign embassies are also located in the new section. Ankara has experienced a phenomenal growth since it was made Turkey's capital in 1923, when it was "a small town of no importance". In 1924, the year after the government had moved there, Ankara had about 35,000 residents. By 1927 there were 44,553 residents and by 1950 the population had grown to 286,781. After 1930, the city officially became known in Western languages as Ankara. By the late 1930s, the English name "Angora" was no longer in popular use. in Ankara is the largest library in Turkey, with a collection of over 4 million printed books Ankara continued to grow rapidly during the latter half of the 20th century and eventually outranked
İzmir as Turkey's second-largest city, after
Istanbul. Ankara's urban population reached 4,587,558 in 2014, while the population of
Ankara Province reached 5,150,072 in 2015. The
Presidential Palace of Turkey is situated in Ankara. This building serves as the main residence of the president. == Geography ==