Showing posts with label Roman Bath. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roman Bath. Show all posts

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Memorable Mosaics

via Telegraph.co.uk
The most magnificent mosaics I've ever seen were in Italy. St. Peter's in Rome, Ravenna, the Basilica San Marco of Venice....

Water from the infamous Venetian floods is wreaking havoc on Basilica San Marco though, so the floors are a treacherous proposition for anyone to navigate. It's a shame because you want to look up, but then you really need to look down or you'll be making a less-than-graceful swan dive.

Turkey has it's fair share of mosaics too. In fact, experts were busy uncovering some more in the Hagia Sophia recently. The latest find was the seraphim pictured here and there are plans to uncover matching ones in three other corners of the building. But while some historians revel in this piece of news, many are lamenting the flooding of Allianoi.

Mosaics of the Roman baths at Allianoi, near Bergama, suffered from years of disuse and disrepair because of flooding by the nearby Ilya river. When the site was slated to be flooded permanently by a state dam building project however, world heritage organizations finally woke up and said something. Too little, too late, I'm afraid. 
via Mersin.edu.tr

In my MS, the Narlikuyu mosaic depicting the three graces makes a cameo appearance. The Roman bath it's located in is probably Turkey's smallest museum and it could use a dusting!

The moral of my story - go visit some of these places! They're more than worth our time and some of them, unfortunately, won't be around forever.

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