Penela Castle In The Portugal Trip By Ehsan Ganji/2024

On one of the days of our stay in the city of Penela, the host festival planned a visit to a cultural heritage site for us. A Roman villa (one of the world's most endangered monuments) not far from Penela Castle.

As we passed through the gate, we saw a historical site with the remains of stone walls of a private building that had a specific plan including various rooms, a kitchen, etc. At first glance, I thought to myself that examples of such buildings can be found everywhere in our country, but the interior of the building was covered in sand, and that was the interesting thing.

A little later, one of the building's conservation officers took off his shoes and walked on the sand and started to remove parts of it. We noticed that the entire floor of the building was beautifully painted with small colored stones and tiles. This style of painting is one of the most ancient arts, dating back several thousand years (at least since the ancient Greek era) and is known as Roman mosaic due to the prevalence of this art during the Roman Empire. I asked why they were pouring sand over the entire area, and they said it was the only way to preserve the tiles until a large, safe shelter could be built. In the sixth picture, there is a picture of the entire area without the sand, and in the following pictures you can see other examples of this ancient art.