Its history dating back millennia, Turkey’s capital, Ankara, is littered with the traces of various civilizations, including Hittites, Phrygians and Romans. Many of those historical remains, however, were obscured by government buildings, roads and brothels built over them. Some of those constructions have been demolished in recent years, raising the prospect of new discoveries that may shed fresh light on human history.
The city’s Roman past offers an especially exciting line for new discoveries, with a large Roman bath complex already one of Ankara’s top historic landmarks. A prominent element of city life in the Roman Empire, the baths were places where people came not only to clean themselves but also to socialize and spend leisure time. The baths were so central to Roman culture that they were one of the first constructions the empire erected to Romanize the places it conquered.
