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Mosaic fragment, Naples
This is a small part of a very large and
very famous mosaic depicting Alexander defeating the Persian king Darius
III. This used to be on a floor in a villa in Pompeii. I think I would
have trouble bringing myself to walk on something so fine that must have
taken many hours of painstaking, tedious effort to put together. A
modern re-creation of this mosaic has been installed in place of the
original. It required 2 million pieces and took a team of nine mosaic
masters 22 months to complete, at a cost of more than $200,000.
It's pretty staggering to think that buildings in Pompeii and other
Roman cities all over the Mediterranean were full of these things.
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