The Roman villa - Olive oil mill, Granite Forum, water clock, St Epiphanios basilica. Salamis.

The Roman villa is to be found to the south of the theatre. This, however, is one of these ruins where you will have to let your imagination have its head! The building once had two stories. The entrance was similar in design to a church apse, and it had a central inner courtyard with a columned portico. The living rooms were located on either side of the courtyard. During excavations here, a platform with a mosaic floor covered with animal motives surrounding a central figure was discovered. After the city was abandoned, the building was used as an olive mill. The large stone mill which was used to crunch the olives in the reception hall was discovered, along with mill stones and straining devices. The first excavations in Granite Forum area had been carried out by a British Expedition in 1890 and the area was named as the Granite Forum because of the granite columns found in the west of the intersection point of cardo maximus. and decumanus maximus at the north of the St. Epiphanius Basilica located within the late city walls surrounding the city center against the Arap raids. The marble frieze blocks found at the upper levels of the trench must have been belonged to a monumental building (quadrivium?) dated to 3rd century AD which location in the area has not been determined yet. Remains - including a stone cut channel - of a structure sometimes described as a water clock. St Epiphanios basilica can be found a little beyond the Roman Villa. At 58m by 42m, this was once the largest basilica in Cyprus. Built around 400AD as the metropolitan church of Salamis, the basilica consists of a nave separated from its aisles by two rows of columns. At one end there is a triple-arched semi-circular apse with seats for the bishop and clergy. Rooms on either side of the apse were used for dressing and storage. Hypocaust remains in the baptistery lead us to believe that baptisms were carried out in the winter with warm water, as well as in the summer. The church was destroyed during the Arab raids in the 7th century. Music: one night in Memphis by: panu featuring: RT, The Admiral http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/panumoon/58509 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) I created all visual content. CC BY 3.0 Unported license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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