The Devnya Mosaic Museum is the only one of its kind in the country.

On display are Roman and Early Byzantine mosaics from the ancient Roman town of Marcianopolis, the period capital of the Roman Province of Moesia Secunda.

    The town of Marzianopolis was built by the springs of the Devnya river after the Second Dacian war with the Roman Emperor Marcus Ulpius Trajanus (98-117) and was named after the emperor's sister Marziana.

    According to an old legend, one of Marziana's slaves dropped a golden vessel into one of the karst springs and it sank down. After a while it emerged to the surface again. The emperor was told about the incident and he decided that the miracle was due to the good gene of the spring and founded a town there in accordance with the customs of the time.

 

 Mosaic Museum - Devnya

The Ancient Roman "Marcianopolis"

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This is a mobile multiple image projector. If it does not work on your system, view by clicking on the thumbnails listed below.

Please note - There are more photos on the projector than there are in these thumbnails.

     The museum has been erected on the foundations of a large Roman structure with mosaics from the 3rd - 4th century which existed until its destruction in the 7th century.

The building's plan follows the traditions of the Greek-Roman atrium-persil residential place with 21 residential, processing and storage rooms arranged around a closed yard, paved with stone slabs and brickwork water well in the middle, surrounded on 3 sides by covered colonnade. The walls of the residential rooms were covered by colored paint and murals of plaster. Five of the building's rooms and porticoes are covered with multi-colored floor mosaics (the only found in Bulgaria according to that period). Three of the mosaics are displayed in the rooms where they have been found. The mosaics were made in the classical techniques out of small cube shaped stones of marble, limestone, baked clay and colored glass in 16 colors. The mosaics depict mainly personages and scenes of the Greek and Roman mythology, exotic birds, animals, floral and geometric shapes.