The Inscriptions Museum is on the west side of the Upper Agora, housed in a row of vaults that were part of the substructure of the Temple of Domitian (see below). Over 3000 complete and fragmentary inscriptions have been collected here, and a selection of around 60 are exhibited.

However, like the Museum for the Visually Impaired, it is usually closed and the most interesting inscriptions locked behind metal gates. There is no notice to inform visitors how they can gain access to the collection. Several fragments of inscriptions stand or lie in and around the vaults without labelling, but most provide little of interest to the general visitor.

Most visitors spend an hour or two at the archaeological site, and there are so many things to see that enigmatic dedications and public announcements on stone are usually not on their top ten lists. Although some inscriptions have beautiful lettering or historical significance, most are not easy to decipher even if you can read ancient Greek or Latin. They often include baffling abbreviations and refer to apparently obscure people with long Roman names. Even the specialists, archaeologists and epigraphists who spend years studying and debating the content, meaning and significance of such inscriptions, find it difficult to make sense of such puzzling proclamations.

Many of the approximately 6000 inscriptions discovered at Ephesus provide clues about the lives of kings, emperors and other prominent people, as well as the history of specific buildings, religious and civic institutions, laws, practices, cult festivals and rituals. One inscription here, for example deals with the death penalty for sacrilege (late 4th century BC), while others concern the rights of citizenship during the Hellenistic period and imperial letters. Most are honorific dedications to rulers and local dignitaries, including the Sophist Titus Flavius Damianus, a wealthy Ephesian citizen who funded several public buildings in the 2nd century AD.

Those wishing to visit the Inscriptions Museum should contact the management of the archaeological site before visiting Ephesus. It may be that access is only allowed to academics by appointment.