Excavators working at the ancient city of Pompeiopolis, on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, have exposed roughly 105 square metres of a fourth-century mosaic floor inside a basilica on the site’s acropolis. The pavement, made up largely of geometric patterns, survived in unusually good condition, and researchers say it does not yet represent the mosaic’s full extent.
Turkey’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, announced the find alongside a second discovery from this year’s season: a marble head depicting Eros, the Greek god of love and desire, dating to the second half of the second century AD. Work at the basilica, part of a broader excavation programme that has run at the site since 2006, began in 2025.
A basilica on the acropolis of a Roman provincial capital
Pompeiopolis was founded by the Roman general Pompey the Great in 64 or 63 BC, following his victory over Mithridates VI of Pontus, as part of a wider reorganisation of northern Anatolia. The city, located at Zımbıllı Tepe near the modern town of Taşköprü in Kastamonu Province, went on to become the capital of the Paphlagonia region and developed into one of its most important administrative and urban centres. Excavations there have continued for two decades, with 2026’s work concentrated on the basilica and the surrounding acropolis. This season’s dig is directed by Associate Professor Mevlüt Eliüşük of Karabük University’s Department of Archaeology, working under Türkiye’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism with support from Taşköprü Municipality. The 2026 team numbers 45 people, including a 15-member group from Italy working alongside Turkish archaeologists, and the season is also backed by the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums, the mining company Acacia Mining, and the Kastamonu and Taşköprü district governor’s offices; depending on how that funding holds up, fieldwork is expected to run through the end of October.
A geometric mosaic still only partly uncovered
The newly exposed pavement covers the central nave of the basilica and dates to the fourth century AD. “During our work in the central nave of the basilica, we uncovered approximately 105 square metres of floor mosaics dating to the fourth century A.D., consisting of geometric compositions and in very good condition,” Ersoy said in a social media post announcing the find. He added that the mosaic flooring in the central nave has not yet been fully uncovered, meaning additional sections likely remain beneath ground that has yet to be excavated. Conservation work has proceeded alongside the digging, with archaeologists stabilising and documenting the exposed sections before extending the excavation further. The basilica itself covers roughly 1,000 square metres, and Eliüşük has said the immediate goal is to expose at least half of the floor mosaic this season, carry out protective conservation work, and resume digging in 2027 rather than clear the whole nave at once. “We hope to see the figures featured in the mosaics within 15 to 20 days,” he told Türkiye Today as the season got under way, pointing to figural scenes that may lie beneath the geometric border already uncovered.
A building remade for Christian worship
Architectural and stratigraphic evidence indicates the basilica’s earliest phase dates to around AD 150 to 160, a period when Pompeiopolis was flourishing as a Roman provincial centre. The structure was later transformed and folded into the city’s Christian religious complex; according to Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Pompeiopolis had become an episcopal centre by around the fifth century AD. The mosaic uncovered this year belongs to that later, Christian-era phase of the building, laid some two centuries after the basilica first went up. Eliüşük has also said no other Roman-period basilica has yet been identified anywhere else in the western Black Sea region, a claim that, if it holds up under further study, would make the Pompeiopolis structure the only building of its kind confirmed in that part of Anatolia.
An Eros head from an earlier Pompeiopolis
The marble Eros head was found in the pastophorium, a side chamber connected to the basilica’s later Christian use and positioned near the sanctuary. Dating to the second half of the second century AD, the sculpture predates the building’s Christian phase by more than a hundred years, illustrating how older material was incorporated into the structure as it was repeatedly remade. Together with the mosaic and the building’s architectural history, the find adds to a picture of Pompeiopolis as a prosperous centre with an active artistic and cultural life under Roman rule.
Evidence of wealth beyond the basilica
Conservation work is also continuing on mosaics found in a separate residential complex at the site, known as the Roman Villa. First identified during rescue excavations in 1984 and investigated further between 2006 and 2008, the villa covers about 2,550 square metres and is organised around a central peristyle courtyard. Its reception rooms were finished with opus sectile flooring, and at least four rooms were equipped with hypocaust underfloor heating, details that point to the wealth of at least some of Pompeiopolis’s Roman-period residents.
What lay hidden before the shovels arrived
Much of what excavators are now uncovering was first hinted at by geophysical surveys carried out in 2005, which revealed streets, public buildings and two theatres beneath the ground without a single trench being dug. One of the theatres preserves rows of marble seating and elements of its decorated stage building; an inscription dates its construction to around AD 150, roughly the same period as the basilica’s earliest phase. Pompeiopolis remained significant through the Roman and Byzantine periods before falling under Seljuk control in the early thirteenth century, after which its ancient name disappeared; the neighbouring settlement instead took the name Taşköprü, or “stone bridge,” after the crossing over the Amnias River that still gives the modern town its name.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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