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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