Richard And Jo Demeester's photos with the keyword: mosaic

While the skulls are an interesting draw for the Cathedral, the cathedral is bestowed with other interesting sights, including the amazing mosaic floor from the 12th century.

This cool mosaic at the World Heritage site of Letoön was in the altar area of a temple dedicated to Apollo. Apollo and his sister Artemis were children of Leto, fathered by Zeus. Unfortunately, Leto was not Zeus' wife. Hera was, and she was one goddess you did not want to cross. It gets complicated, but Letoön is apparently where Leto and her twin babies ended up when on the run. Oh, the people of the area apparently denied her access to water, so she turned them all in to frogs. Frogs inhabit all the swamps and pools of the site, and are said to be descendants of those cursed people.

This mosaic floor is in the Church of St Nicholas, Demre.

One of the beautiful mosaics uncovered in a series of terrace houses, Ephesus.

This beautiful section of a mosaic was nicknamed Gypsy Girl because of her hair and earrings. The eyes are the sort which follow you around the room, although they seemed to follow Jo more than me. The rest of the mosaic was stolen from the original location, but this section was missed by the thieves, and it is considered a masterpiece of mosaic art.

Some of the mosaics we are encountering in this part of Turkey are so superb that they look like tapestries. This mosaic was in the bottom of a shallow pool in a Roman house. It was relocated to this museum in Gaziantep when the site where it was found was flooded by the waters of a new dam, about 20 years ago.

A vertical panorama inside the former Church of the Divine Wisdom, now the Aya Sofya Museum, in Trabzon, showing the floor mosaic work as well as the light and spacious dome.

Another beautiful mosaic with another Greek tale, of Theseus and the Minotaur.

From the House of Dionysus, Pafos. This mosaic is from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, a Greek tragedy, where Pyramus discovers a tiger with Thisbe's veil and assumes that his love has been devoured, so kills himself. Thisbe is actually in hiding from the tiger, and when she comes out to find her lover dead, uses his sword to kill herself also. They ain't called “tragedies” for nothing!

A section of floor from a house that was destroyed many centuries ago in an earthquake. It is now known as the “Gladiator's House”, for obvious reasons.