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Photo: Klaus-Peter Simon, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Stunning mosaics excavated at Zeugma 50 km east. "Zeugma" means a junction, a fastening-together, referring to the pontoon bridge over the Euphrates and the Roman garrison town guarding it. The river marked the border between Roman and Persian territory, but for many years it was peaceful, so officers settled and retired there, adorning their villas. Best known is the female image known as "the gypsy girl" for her earrings - she was probably a Mainad, a party animal who cavorted with Dionysius, but her fate has been to stare from the floor up the togas of fat middle-aged fellows. Zeugma was submerged when the Birecik Dam was completed in 2001, so the best of its remains were relocated here in a former tobacco factory.
Zeugma Mosaic Museum, in the city of Gaziantep, Turkey, is the biggest mosaic museum in the world, containing 1700 m2 of mosaics. It opened to the public on 9 September 2011. The 30,000 m2 (320,000 sq ft) museum features 2,448 m2 (26,350 sq ft) of mosaic and replaces the Bardo National Museum in Tunis as the world's largest mosaic museum.
Panoramic display of the War of Independence.
How the olives were mushed into soap.
Atatürk stayed overnight here in 1933 and the house is now a museum of early Republican times.