The Refectory: Four-Star Dining

Martyrius’s largest and best-preserved mosaic covered the floor of the refectory, or dining hall, the most magnificent structure in the monastery. Two rows of seven columns divided the 86-foot-long, basilica-style room into a main hall with two aisles. In the center of the hall, a ribbon of tesserae creates a seemingly endless pattern of circles and four-petaled rosettes, framed by a guilloche pattern of paired ribbons in interlaced curves. Although the columns are gone, their bases still jut up from the floor and four of their capitals have been discovered—each with a different design, a common feature in the Byzantine period. Between the columns lay rectangular mosaic panels, with varying designs incorporating lozenges and circles. Benches lined the walls. Here monks ate, studied and conducted certain religious rites celebrated outside the church.