There is a museum in Antakia, turkey's capital city of Hatay, with the largest archaeological excavations in the region since the 1930s. The museum has unearthed more than 30,000 artifacts from 13 civilizations from different periods. Amazingly, just above the archaeological site, there is a hotel "floating"! Why are hotels in museums? How does this hotel "float" over the archaeological site?
Antakia has a long history, and the ancient city of Antioch, founded at the end of the 4th century BC, is located here. Located on an important route to Mesopotamia, Jerusalem and Anatolia, Antioch's developed trade once brought great wealth, making it the third largest city in the Roman Empire after Rome and Alexandria. More than 2,000 years later, in 2009, when a local hotel developer in Antakia was building, he was surprised to find that under the ground was the ruins of the ancient city of Antioch!
According to Abbasoglu, president of the Antachia Museum Hotel, they did not expect to find the archaeological site. She said that after the discovery of cultural relics in the area, construction stopped immediately.
120 workers, 35 archaeologists, and 5 architects started working every day at 5 a.m., which lasted for several years, and unearthed more than 30,000 cultural relics spanning different historical periods, the most amazing of which was more than 1,000 square meters of geometric mosaic floor tiles. Archaeologists believe that these floor tiles are part of the floor of the ancient city of Antioch public buildings, and although they were damaged in a series of major earthquakes and the foundations fluctuated violently, the mosaic floor tiles still firmly attached to the ground. The protection of excavated cultural relics is not simply to excavate them completely or cover them, but to build a museum hotel above the site by archaeologists and architects working together.
Recently, Chen Huihui, a reporter from the Central Radio and Television Corporation, walked into this museum hotel. Walking around the hotel, it feels like a labyrinth and it is very easy to get lost, because in order to protect the archaeological site, the hotel has built many passages to connect different areas. In total, the architects used 66 huge steel columns and 20,000 tons of hand-welded steel structures to create a hotel that seemed to 'float' above the archaeological site.
The key to allowing the hotel to "float" lies in these 66 giant steel columns. Abbasiolu said that each cylinder should be dug at least 25 meters without damaging any of the ruins. However, water often comes out during the digging process, and the water must be drained and the soil removed and placed elsewhere until it is completely dry to ensure structural safety.
In addition, the café in the public area of the museum hotel is also popular. In the café, modern architecture and ancient civilizations are seamlessly connected. More than two thousand years ago, under the same sky, there were also ancient people living here, which was a wonderful feeling, like entering a time tunnel.
Abbasoglu, President of the Antakia Museum Hotel, said: "Here, guests will feel like they are living both in the past and in the present, like a time tunnel. It's important for us to meet the needs of our guests today, but at the same time we want them to feel the history. ”
Producer 丨 Mully
Editor-in-chief 丨Zhu Yunxiang
Reporter 丨 Chen Huihui