Turkey’s capital was Celtic Galatia’s hub before Angora wool
Ankara’s urban core holds over 5.3 million people, second in Turkey only to Istanbul. Once Ancyra/Angora, it capped Celtic Galatia from 280–64 BC and a Roman province afterward. Hittites, Phrygians, Romans, Byzantines, and Turks all left marks on the castle hill above the Ankara River.
The earliest settlers were Bronze Age Hattians, absorbed by the Hittites around 2000–1700 BC; whether the Hittite cult centre Ankuwaš was Ankara is still argued. The town boomed under the Phrygians from about 1000 BC, swelled by refugees from their capital Gordion after an earthquake, and Phrygian lore honoured King Midas as founder, though the geographer Pausanias rightly judged it older. Lydians and Persians followed until Alexander the Great took the city in 333 BC, and after his death it passed to his general Antigonus.
Greeks called it Ánkyra, anchor, and Romans Ancyra. It served as capital of Celtic Galatia and then of the Roman province of that name from 25 BC into the seventh century. After the Seljuks annexed it in 1073, Europeans called it Angora, the Ottomans Engürü, and the Ottomans later made it the seat of several provinces.
Its modern role began on 23 April 1920, when the Grand National Assembly first met here and the city became headquarters of the independence struggle. With the founding of the Republic on 29 October 1923 it replaced Istanbul as capital. The old core is a rocky hill rising about 150 metres over the Ankara River, a tributary of the Sakarya, topped by castle ruins, with Roman and Ottoman buildings scattered through town.
Government is a leading employer, but road and rail links make the city a commercial and industrial centre, and its universities place it among the world's top hundred science and technology clusters. Though set in dry steppe, it counts 72 square metres of green space per resident. The old name lives on in Angora rabbits, mohair goats and Angora cats, and the region is known for pears, honey and Muscat grapes.
Source: Ankara
