Editing Ankara (section)

===Roman history===
The city was subsequently passed under the control of the [[Roman Empire]]. In 25&nbsp;BC, Emperor [[Augustus]] raised it to the status of a ''[[polis]]'' and made it the capital city of the [[Roman province]] of [[Galatia (Roman province)|Galatia]].<ref name="TIB">{{cite book|last=Belke|first=Klaus|title=Tabula Imperii Byzantini, Band 4: Galatien und Lykaonien|chapter=Ankyra|pages=[https://archive.org/details/tabulaimperiibyz0000unse/page/126 126–130]|location=Vienna|publisher=Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften|year=1984|language=de|isbn=978-3-7001-0634-0|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/tabulaimperiibyz0000unse/page/126}}</ref> 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 [[relief|bas-relief]]s, 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]].{{Citation needed|date=October 2012}}

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.<ref name="TIB"/> The great imperial road running east passed through Ankara and a succession of emperors and their armies came this way. They were not the only ones to use the Roman highway network, which was equally convenient for invaders. In the second half of the 3rd century, Ancyra was invaded in rapid succession by the [[Goths]] coming from the west (who rode far into the heart of [[Cappadocia]], taking slaves and pillaging) and later by the [[Arab people|Arab]]s. For about a decade, the town was one of the western outposts of one of Palmyrean empress [[Zenobia]] in the [[Syrian Desert]], who took advantage of a period of weakness and disorder in the Roman Empire to set up a short-lived state of her own.

The town was reincorporated into the Roman Empire under Emperor [[Aurelian]] in 272. The [[tetrarchy]], a system of multiple (up to four) emperors introduced by [[Diocletian]] (284–305), seems to have engaged in a substantial program of rebuilding and of road construction from Ancyra westwards to Germe and [[Dorylaeum]] (now [[Eskişehir]]).

In its heyday, Roman Ancyra was a large market and trading center but it also functioned as a major administrative capital, where a high official ruled from the city's Praetorium, a large administrative palace or office. During the 3rd century, life in Ancyra, as in other Anatolian towns, seems to have become somewhat militarized in response to the invasions and instability of the town.

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Museum of Anatolian Civilizations116.jpg|Marble head of a Roman woman on display at the [[Museum of Anatolian Civilizations]].
Res Gestae.jpg|The ''[[Res Gestae Divi Augusti]]'' is the self-laudatory autobiography completed in 13&nbsp;AD, just before his death, by the first [[Roman emperor]] [[Augustus]]. Most of the text is preserved on the walls of the [[Monumentum Ancyranum]].
Ankara Thermen05.jpg|The [[Roman Baths of Ankara]] were constructed by the Roman emperor [[Caracalla]] (212–217) in honor of [[Asclepios]], the God of Medicine, and built around three principal rooms: the ''[[caldarium]]'' (hot bath), the ''[[tepidarium]]'' (warm bath) and the ''[[frigidarium]]'' (cold bath) in a typically laid-out {{convert|80|x|120|m|adj=on|abbr=off|sp=us}} classical complex.
</gallery>