Kneeling on thick pieces of foam workers hunch over a brown, white and black tile mosaic whose design represents the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers as well as trees, flowers and geometric figures.
In the ruins of an ancient Byzantine church in northern Jordan, local townspeople and Syrian refugees work side-by-side. Workers restore a mosaic floor piece by piece at the St John the Baptist church, built in 619 AD.
It is one of three church mosaic floors under restoration, or recently restored, in the small town of Rihab, adding to an impressive array of such national treasures.
Jordan's most renowned mosaic is one of the oldest maps of the Holy Land, consisting of over two million mosaic stones originally built into the floor of a sixth-century Byzantine church in Madaba.
Rihab, 70km north of the capital Amman has over time been home to around 32 churches but nowadays only the ruins of five or six are visible.
Three hundred people, a fifth of them women, are working on the pilot project to restore the sites, run by UN cultural agency UNESCO and financed by Germany.
The project has two main aims: preserving the heritage and creating job opportunities for local communities. The workers were trained in the site's history and churches, along with how to work with mosaics and restoration.
UNESCO official Giorgia Cesaro said the project represented "a change in the approach to heritage conservation", one that took into consideration the communities living near the archaeological sites.
