Turkey will open the world's biggest mosaic museum
in 2011
Michael Roberts - Balkans.com
Source - Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism
Turkey's south-eastern city Gaziantep is going to welcome the world's
largest mosaic museum this year. The world's current largest mosaic
museum in Tunis will be second largest after the opening of Gaziantep
Zeugma Museum. Zeugma is an ancient city of Commagne, currently
located in the town of Nizip, forty-five kilometers away from Gaziantep.
The significance of Zeugma is the Roman villas and their amazing
floor mosaics. Zeugma captured the public attention when the Birecik
Dam Project brought up the possibility that Zeugma could be inundated
under the dam's waters.
The majority of the Roman villas were brought to daylight within
the framework of a rescue excavation, which was intensified in 2000.
Yet the total of the excavations, which were originally started
in 1987, have discovered only a small number of these unique mosaics.
Today in the Zeugma Mosaics Museum 500 meter square-wide mosaics
and 35 mosaic panels, as well as the famous bronze Mars and Aphrodite
statutes, are on display.
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