Byzantine Tomb of Lapidarium of Caracalla Bath

Within the grounds of Ankara's Roman Baths, built in the third century AD under the emperor Caracalla and dedicated to Asclepios, god of healing, excavators uncovered a significant Byzantine burial during work carried out in 1939. The baths themselves, a large complex of caldarium, tepidarium and frigidarium chambers covering roughly 80 by 120 meters near the old Ulus district, fell out of use after a fire in the eighth century and now survive mainly as foundation-level ruins. The surrounding archaeological park also serves as an open-air lapidarium, displaying close to a thousand stone funerary stelae, inscriptions and architectural fragments gathered from Roman and Byzantine Ankara across some 65,000 square meters. Among the finds uncovered here, one Early Byzantine monumental tomb stands out: a four-by-four-meter, cross-shaped family burial chamber whose interior walls were decorated with colorful frescoes carrying religious and spiritual imagery typical of the period, offering a rare glimpse of early Christian funerary art in the Ankara region.