A 105-square-metre mosaic floor and a marble Eros head surfaced at Pompeiopolis

A single excavation season at a Roman city on Turkiye’s Black Sea coast has produced both a sprawling geometric mosaic floor and a delicately carved marble head, finds that together are giving archaeologists a clearer view of a basilica that once anchored the city’s public life. The site, Pompeiopolis, sits beneath a hill near the town of Taskopru in Kastamonu province and continues to yield finds well beyond what its modest modern profile might suggest.

Founded by Pompey, Buried Under Zimbilli Tepe

Pompeiopolis was established by the Roman general Pompey the Great following his defeat of Mithridates VI of Pontus in 64 or 63 BCE, and its remains now lie largely beneath a rise known as Zimbilli Tepe. Excavations there in the current season focused on a basilica, a large civic building type the Romans used for legal proceedings, business, and public gatherings, and it was inside this structure that the newest finds emerged.

The city sat inland from Turkiye’s Black Sea coast in the historical region of Paphlagonia, serving as an administrative center that helped Rome consolidate its hold over former Pontic territory after Pompey’s campaigns against Mithridates. Long-running excavation at the site has gradually exposed streets, a theater, and public buildings, giving archaeologists a working street plan for a city that receives far less attention internationally than famous Roman sites in Italy or the eastern Mediterranean, despite a comparable density of surviving architecture.

A 105-Square-Metre Floor in the Basilica Nave

Archaeologists uncovered roughly 105 square metres of mosaic flooring in the basilica’s nave, composed of geometric patterns and reported to be in very good condition despite the passage of roughly seventeen centuries. The floor has been dated to the fourth century CE, placing its construction in the late Roman period when Pompeiopolis remained an active provincial center. Excavators note that the exposed section likely does not represent the mosaic’s full extent, since further stretches of flooring probably remain buried beneath areas of the site not yet opened.

A Marble Eros From an Earlier Phase

The second major find, a carved marble head depicting Eros, the Greek god of love and desire, came from the basilica’s pastophorion, a side chamber attached to the main hall. Researchers date the head to the second half of the second century CE, meaning it predates the mosaic floor by roughly two hundred years and reflects an earlier decorative phase of the same building. Its recovery in this specific chamber gives archaeologists a data point for how the basilica’s decoration and function shifted across the centuries it remained in use.

What the Finds Reveal About Provincial Roman Taste

Geometric mosaic flooring of the kind found in the nave was a standard feature of high-status Roman civic architecture across the empire’s provinces, and its presence at Pompeiopolis confirms the city maintained building standards in step with wealthier Mediterranean centers well into the fourth century. The Eros head, by contrast, points to the kind of mythological sculptural decoration that Roman elites favored in earlier centuries, suggesting the basilica accumulated distinct layers of ornamentation as it was maintained, renovated, and possibly rededicated over a long working life.

A Site That Keeps Producing New Material

Pompeiopolis has been under periodic excavation for years, and Turkish cultural authorities have used seasonal finds like this one to draw comparisons to better-known Roman sites while noting that Kastamonu’s city has its own distinct excavation history rather than any direct connection to the more famous Italian Pompeii, beyond the shared root of Pompey’s name. Current reporting on the 2026 season indicates work at the basilica is ongoing, with archaeologists continuing to clear adjacent sections in hopes of tracing the mosaic’s full boundaries and locating further sculptural fragments tied to the same building phases.

Next Steps for Conservation

As with most large in-situ mosaic finds, conservation specialists will need to stabilize the tesserae before the floor can be safely exposed to routine foot traffic or seasonal weather, a process that typically involves cleaning, consolidating loose sections, and in some cases constructing a protective shelter over the excavated area. The marble head will undergo separate cleaning and study to confirm its stylistic dating and possible workshop origins.

A Basilica That Outlasted Its Builders

The two-century gap between the Eros head and the mosaic floor is itself informative, since it means the basilica remained a functioning, actively maintained civic building across a long stretch of Roman provincial history rather than being built once and left unchanged. Public buildings of this scale typically underwent multiple renovation phases as tastes, budgets, and civic priorities shifted, and archaeologists often use exactly this kind of stratified evidence, an earlier sculptural fragment turning up in a later structural context, to reconstruct how a building’s use and decoration evolved over its working life. For Pompeiopolis, a city whose Roman-era history is far less thoroughly documented in surviving written sources than better-known provincial capitals, physical finds like these mosaics and sculptural fragments carry outsized weight in reconstructing how the city actually functioned.

This article was created with the assistance of AI and reviewed by an editor.

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