An excavation of the ancient city of Myra and its harbor, Port Andriake, in southwestern Turkey has uncovered plates and fragments of millefiori glass from the 5th century numbering in the hundreds. The intact glass plates are about four inches square and every one of them is different. Conservators have puzzled together close to 30 plates that are virtually complete. There are hundreds more small pieces currently being put together. Millefiori, Italian for “a thousand flowers,” is a glasswork technique that layers tiny glass canes of different colors and then fuses them together to create an kaleidoscopic explosion of floral and geometric patterns. The rods are arranged by hand and the fusing process adds an element of randomness, so no two patterns are ever the same. A popular technique in antiquity since the 1st century and still today, millefiori glassware has been found in many parts of the Roman Empire, but not in Turkey. Researchers have found references to one or two millefiori artifacts in the scholarship, but not the objects themselves. Even finding one complete plate in Turkey would be a stunning discovery, but the quantity and quality of the millefiori glassware in the Andriake excavation is unprecedented. The plates were unearthed in room 42 of the customs area of Andriake’s agora. It was at the corner of the agora and the main granary, the most important location of the harbor. Archaeologists think the building had an administrative function. The millefiori pieces are believed to have been used as wall decoration in this building, along with other glass elements. The team also found opus sectile (marble and stone cut to form mosaic figures and patterns) depicting birds, camels and saints. The opus sectile saints are also unique on the archaeological record of Turkey. Archaeologists were able to date the millefiori glass to the 5th and 6th centuries thanks to other objects found in the same archaeological layer, including ceramics and coins. They also found glass rods that had not yet been layered, cut and fused, evidence that the millefiori were not only imported, but also  manufactured there. The discovery of these millefiori glass elements and other decorative techniques in Andriake challenges the notion that such sophisticated glass techniques and mural decorations were exclusive to the larger centers of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, suggesting there was a sufficiently developed network of trade and communication to allow the diffusion of these techniques to more remote places like Andriake.