The Face of Gaziantep

A 2,300-year-old young girl!

Besides pistachios, Gaziantep has another famous landmark: the Gypsy Girl of Zeugma! Her image adorns the entire city and countless souvenir items. It is a mosaic depicting the face of a young girl. This mosaic comes from the ancient city of Zeugma.

In antiquity, Zeugma was a city located on the western bank of the Euphrates and, due to its location, an important stop on the Silk Road trade route. This ancient city lies in what is now Gaziantep, near the small town of Birecik. Zeugma was founded in the 3rd century BC and later fell to the Romans. It appears the city was abandoned in the 7th century due to looting. Since then, other peoples apparently lived in the ruins from time to time, but the city's heyday was over.

The famous floor mosaic of the Gypsy Girl was discovered by archaeologists in 1998! It originally adorned the dining room floor of a villa belonging to a wealthy family from Zeugma. The Gypsy Girl is now on display at the Zeugma Mosaic Museum in Gaziantep. The museum was ceremoniously opened in 2011 and is the largest mosaic museum in the world. Its discoverers gave her the name because of her large earrings, her piercing eyes, and her tousled hair. The Gypsy Girl is the museum's main attraction and draws thousands of visitors every year. The mosaic has another special feature that I was also able to experience myself: no matter from which position you look at the mosaic, the Gypsy Girl always looks you directly in the eyes and draws you into her spell!

It's thanks to a stroke of luck that this well-preserved mosaic was found by archaeologists at all, and wasn't looted beforehand, as was common practice, which you can tell from the missing border of the mosaic. The girl's face was actually located under a fallen column and was therefore overlooked by treasure hunters all those years.

This is the discovery story of a young girl who gained worldwide fame in no time and became the "Face of Gaziantep." Depictions of this mosaic can be found all over Gaziantep — as paintings in restaurants, in hotels, in shops, or as sculptures in public parks. Antiquity's cover girl is everywhere! If you ever find yourself in Gaziantep one day, you can see for yourself. Until then...