New Turkish hotel combines modern architecture, Roman mosaics
Ancient Antiochian mosaics and ruins are securely housed and on display inside a luxury hotel-museum in Antakya.
Antakya, a city on the Mediterranean border area between Turkey and Syria, has become home to a new luxury hotel built inside an archaeological park rich in precious mosaics.
In agreement, both lawmakers and scientists have praised the construction of Antakya Museum Hotel as a rare and ideal compromise between private ambitions and public interests, between business priorities and access for all.
In 2009, when the Asfuroglu family decided to build a five-star hotel in a protected area, preliminary excavations revealed the ruins of Antiochia ad Orontem, the second most important city of the Roman Empire — after Rome itself — in terms of population and wealth. Antakya, the capital of Hatay Province that sits over the ancient city, is a major tourism and gastronomy destination.
In the course of the excavations, the layers of a vast public area used for administrative and commercial purposes emerged. It is the agora of the first Hellenistic settlement, dating back to the third century B.C. Its large basilica was built in the third or fourth century A.D., and the area's marble floor and colorful geometric mosaics are still intact.
