Title: Spolia at Ankara Castle
Date: Exact construction date unknown – approximately 7th century
Geography: Ankara, Turkey
Culture: Byzantine, Seljuk, Ottoman
Medium: Spolia (Reused Architectural Materials)

Keywords: Ankara Castle, Spolia, Fortifications, Reuse
Citation: Selman Oğuzcan Ünal, “Spolia at Ankara Castle,” in “The Material Culture of the Medieval Black Sea,” Medieval Black Sea Project, edited by Teresa Shawcross et al., https://medievalblackseaproject.princeton.edu/ankara-castle-spolia-selman-oguzcan-unal/
Ankara, historically known as Angora and Ancyra, was the home of many civilizations. Today, the hill around which most of the remains of the old city are found is dominated by Ankara Castle. At the hill’s foot are located the Temple of Augustus and Rome, Roman baths, and the ruins of St. Clement’s church – as well as numerous Rum Seljuk and Ottoman edifices.1 In the Byzantine period, especially from the 7th century CE onwards, Ankara became a significant military center and saw the evolution of its fortifications in response to Arab threats and at least one siege.2 Examining spolia embedded in its fortifications may provide additional insights into its urban trajectories.
The Byzantine fortifications of Ankara have two circuits of walls: the outer (Dış Kale) and inner (İç Kale) walls. The main gate of the inner circuit, known as the Kale Kapı, is embellished with a large number of spolia that were presumably taken from sites that were located in close proximity to the building works. The outer circuit has four to five rectangular towers, with the main gate called the Hisar Kapı, being located on the northwestern side and another gate, the Dış Kapı, being located on the western side.3 All these parts include spolia, specifically massive blocks. Identifying when these spolia were embedded into the fortifications is challenging because of multiple restorations and a lack of consensus on the castle’s date. However, an inscription that names the emperor Michael III (r.842-867), and which indicates the date of 6367-6368 from Creation, i.e., 859 CE, as that of a restoration of the walls. It is difficult to be sure that spolia on the walls were implemented during the reign of Michael, but it is plausible to argue that even though spolia were there before the emperor’s restoration program, at least he preserved them in place. This may indicate the significance of spolia as a tool more complex than merely a phenomenon that is practical, but a way to give symbolic messages to the viewer.
The main gate of the inner circuit had the most significant pieces of reused materials compared to the other parts of the enceinte. The same portion of the fortifications was also used to showcase Michael III’s inscription (324,325,326), which seems to refer to the use of spolia since it states that the emperor embellished the walls with miraculous stones and relics. The inscription talks about Michael’s restoration of the walls in such a way as to emphasize God’s divine protection of the city. This mention of divine protection may be connected to the fact that Christian emblems such as crosses were carved near the arrowslits, similarly to the crosses in the fortifications of Thessaloniki.4 It seems reasonable to deduce that spolia of this type were installed around the gate to perform an apotropaic function – that is, to ward off evil or harmful forces. For example, a spoliated block from the first century CE with a trimmed inscription honoring Axius, a Roman priest with administrative powers,5 was placed upside down, and an upright variant of the chi-rho was carved on the block afterwards. The reorientation of the block (together with its rebranding with a Christian symbol) appears to have been intended to subjugate and turn the “magic” residing in the object against potential enemies – while at the same time celebrating through this action the perceived superiority of Christianity over paganism.6 The intended target of this harnessing of the supernatural may well have been the Arabs, who were often misrepresented by Christian propagandists of the eighth and ninth centuries as polytheists rather than adherents of the rival monotheistic religion of Islam.7


On the southern curtain wall next to the main gate of the inner circuit, there are four little reliefs of herms (a statue in the form of a square stone pillar, topped with a bust or head) each carved with a man holding a lion’s head that may represent Hercules with the Nemean Lion.8 These herms have been installed not according to their original orientation, but rather laid on their side. Although the carved reliefs could conceivably have been used for practical reasons simply because they constituted useful building material, the fact that they were chosen over plain marble blocks without inscriptions, which were even more readily available, deserves some explanation. It may be argued that in the case of Ankara, these herms were placed intentionally to deliver a particular message that insisted on the superiority of Christianity as a religion, while also possibly seeking to harness the pagan statues’ purported demonic powers for military purposes. Above these statues, there is a further assemblage of spolia consisting of a centrally-placed altar that is decorated with a floral garland and is flanked by additional blocks, each of which had been marked by their carvers with a letter indicating their order when originally installed as part of a Roman well parapet.9 Their careful arrangement when reused in the later medieval context shows the deliberate combination of spoliated pieces with the intention of creating a symmetrical, aesthetically pleasing façade. These two tiers of spolia were crowned by a damaged figural relief on top of the well parapets that may tentatively be identified as a depiction of Nike, a pagan goddess whose depiction persisted well into the Christian era on imperial coinage as the personification of military victories and triumphs.10

Finally, three fragments of a Roman sarcophagus with a garlanded relief were integrated into the upper part of the tower around the embrasures adjacent to the gate. The fragments include those of a bull’s head, a mask with female characteristics, and the figure of an eros or putto.11 The use of these elements may indicate a deliberate effort not only to anticipate the celebration of military victory but also to create a connection between the long history of the city and the more recent re-fortifications of its walls.12 Inscriptions indicate that similar claims by rulers to act as protectors of ancient communities were made further to the east by the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid during the re-fortification of the defenses of frontier cities such as Derbent in the eastern Caucasus.13

Given all this, it is plausible to assume that spolia were placed at the most visited or used parts of the castle in order to draw attention to the glorious past of the city. They also may serve as the repository of collective memory encouraging people to recall Ankara’s antiquity and longevity during a period when successive Arab sieges threatened the city.
- Ufuk Serin, “Late Antique and Byzantine Ankara: Topography and Architecture,” in Marmoribus Vestita: Miscellanea in onore di Federico Guidobaldi, ed. Olof Brandt and Philippe Pergola (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 2011), 1257. ↩︎
- Luca Zavagno, “Ancyra and the Anatolian Urbanism in Transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (ca. 550-ca. 800 A.D.),” Bizantinistica 22 (2021): 100. ↩︎
- Stephen Mitchell and David French, eds., The Greek and Latin Inscriptions of Ankara (Ancyra): Vol. II Late Roman, Byzantine and Other Texts (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2019), 79. ↩︎
- Mitchell and French, Inscriptions of Ankara, 82-3; Georges Perrot, Edmond Guillaume, and Jules Delbet, Exploration archéologique de la Galatie et de La Bithynie, d’une partie de la Mysie, de la Phrygie, de la Cappadoce et du Pont (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1872); Nikolas Bakirtzis, “The Visual Language of Fortification Facades: The Walls of Thessaloniki,” Monument and Environment 9, (2005): 21. ↩︎
- Sedat Bornovalı, “An Italian Architect’s First Visit to Ankara: Giulio Mongeri – 1897,” Journal of Ankara Studies 4, no.2 (2016): 141; Francis Edward J. Valpy, An Etymological Dictionary of the Latin Language (London: A. J. Valpy, 1828), 324; Georges Perrot, De Galatia Provincia Romana (Paris: E. Thorin, 1867), 91. ↩︎
- Bakirtzis, “Walls of Thessaloniki,” 15. ↩︎
- Daniel J. Sahas, Byzantium and Islam (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2021), 321. ↩︎
- Urs Peschlow, Ankara: Die bauarchäologischen Hinterlassenschaften aus römischer und byzantinischer Zeit (Textband + Tafelband) (Phoibos Verlag, 2015), 167; Livia Bevilacqua, “Family Inheritance: Classical Antiquities Reused and Displayed in Byzantine Cities,” in Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles, ed. V. Svetlana (St. Petersburg, 2015), 205. ↩︎
- Peschlow, Ankara, 167. ↩︎
- The photos were probably taken before 1933 and they were published in Mamboury’s Guide Touristique d’Ankara. See Peschlow, Ankara: 168 (Photo code “Abb. 385”); Bevilacqua, “Family Inheritance,” 204. ↩︎
- Peschlow, Ankara, 124. ↩︎
- For more on deliberate use of spolia see Helen Saradi, “The Use of Ancient Spolia in Byzantine Monuments: The Archaeological and Literary Evidence,” International Journal of Classical Tradition 3, no.4 (1997): 395–423. ↩︎
- Murtazali Gadjiev and A.R. Shikhsaidov, “The Darband-Nāma on Hārūn Al-Rashīd and a Newly Discovered Arabic Inscription from A.H. 176,” Manuscripta Orientalia. International Journal for Oriental Manuscript Research. Vol.8. No.3, (2002): 7. The author thanks Teresa Shawcross for this reference. ↩︎
Biography
Selman Oğuzcan Ünal holds an MA in Folkloristics and Applied Heritage Studies from the University of Tartu, where he was supervised by Anastasiya Astapova, and an MA in History from Bilkent University, where he completed his research on spolia and spoliation practices of Byzantine and Seljuk Ankara, supervised by Luca Zavagno. He is embarking on his doctoral studies in the Department of Art History at UCLA under the supervision of Sharon Gerstel.
Selected Bibliography
Brilliant, Richard and Dale Kinney, ed. Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine. London: Routledge, 2011.
Foss, Clive. “Late Antique and Byzantine Ankara.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 31, 1977.
Jevtić, Ivana and Suzan Yalman, ed. Spolia Reincarnated: Afterlives of Objects, Materials, and Spaces in Anatolia from Antiquity to the Ottoman Era. Istanbul: ANAMED, 2018.
Peschlow, Urs. Ankara: Roma ve Bizans Dönemi Arkeolji Mirası. Translated by Deniz Saban. Ankara: Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2023.
Serin, Ufuk. “Late Antique and Byzantine Ankara: Topography and Architecture.” In Marmoribus Vestita. Miscellanea in onore di Federico Guidobaldi, edited by Olof Brandt and Philippe Pergola. Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, (2011): 1257–1280.
Ünal, Selman Oğuzcan. “Spolia on the Walls of Ankara Castle, Aslanhane and Alaeddin Mosques” https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/spolia-on-the-walls-of-ankara-castle-aslanhane-and_970215#19/39.93881/32.86453. [last accessed on July 9th, 2025].
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