Zeugma Mosaic Museum

Zeugma was a Roman town at a crossing of the Euphrates, wealthy enough that its villas had mosaic floors of unusual quality. When the Birecik dam reservoir filled in 2000, part of the site went under water, and the rescue excavations that preceded the flooding produced the collection shown here. The museum opened in 2011 in a converted factory building and presents the floors close to their original scale, some laid flat, some raised so you read them as a room's occupant would have. The best known piece is a woman's face in tesserae, called the Gypsy Girl, kept in a darkened room of its own. Wall paintings and bronzes fill out the rest.

What you actually see

• The Gypsy Girl - a fragment of a face whose eyes follow the room, lit alone in the dark.
• Full-scale villa floors - dining and reception rooms rebuilt with their mosaics in place.
• Mythological panels - Poseidon, Dionysos and river gods worked in fine tesserae.
• Wall paintings and bronzes - the rest of what the rescue digs brought up before the water rose.

When to go

Open year-round. Gaziantep is very hot from June to September, so spring and autumn suit a trip that also involves walking the old town. Come on a weekday morning if you can; weekend afternoons bring coach groups and the Gypsy Girl room becomes a slow shuffling queue in the dark.

Honest expectations

The lighting that flatters the mosaics makes photography hard and the dark rooms disorienting. Labels are brief on context, so you get the images without much of the town they came from. Zeugma's own site, an hour away, is largely submerged and gives little back. The museum is large and the concrete shell is cold in winter.

Nearby

Gaziantep's copper bazaar, the castle mound and the baklava shops, ten minutes away in the old town.