Thursday June 27th

Today was our first day back at the convent and not traveling. We were excited to not have to wake up early and just be at the convent in Belmonte all day. After breakfast, we spent the next several hours reconnecting with Roberto-discussing our museum and laboratory visits in Rome as well as our days spent with Roberto Cassio and Gael de Guichen. Following a large lunch, we went back to the classroom. Roberto then showed us a series of videos from past CCA projects to give us an even better idea of the excavation of mosaics and wall murals and the issues associated with such processes.

We focused especially on Roberto Nardi's work on the ancient Roman town of Zeugma, in modern day Gaziantep,Turkey, and the breathtaking floor mosaics found there. The Euphrates River running next to the town was dammed in 2000 and the water level was raising significantly every day, meaning the ruins of Zeugma were under water within a few short months. Roberto assemled a team of all of the mosaic conservation specialists in the world at the time in record speed and they lifted the most unique mosaics before the site was covered with water. They also backfilled the numerous remaining mosaics in order to protect them from the mechanical damage of the river current. The mosaics they lifted, many of them quite massive floor mosaics, are now housed in the Zeugma Mosaic Museum in Gaziantep, Turkey, making it the largest mosaic museum in the world.