“My Zeugma began on a train when my cellphone rang. It was the Californian philanthropist supporting our project at Butrint, Albania – he was calling way after midnight his time. Had I seen the front page of The New York Times about this Roman town being submerged by the waters of a new dam in Turkey? It was fabulously rich. Could the dam be halted? Would I go there on his behalf and start a project? Ill at ease, with the train racing along, I opened my newspaper and abracadabra there was Zeugma – the very same article to which he’d alluded so passionately”
Prof. Richard Hodges, President of the American University of Rome tells us the circumstances that led him in 2000 to Zeugma, the Roman site of a bridge across the Euphrates where countless polychrome mosaics and some of the most beautiful examples of Roman art were rescued and restored thanks to the so called “Zeugma Project”.