The Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum is a part of the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, near the University of St. Thomas, and displays the only intact Byzantine frescoes in the entire western hemisphere. The Byzantine frescoes were taken from a church in Lysi, Cyprus in the 1980s. The chapel museum was opened in February 1997 and displays masterworks from the 13th century—a dome with Christ Pantocrator and an apse depicting the Virgin Mary the Panayia. These frescoes were stolen out of a chapel near Lysi in the Turkish-occupied section of Cyprus in the 1980s, cut into 38 pieces, and shipped to Germany by thieves prepared to sell them in the arts black-market. The 38 fresco fragments were bought from the thieves by the Houston-based Menil Foundation with the knowledge and approval of the Church of Cyprus, the rightful owner of the frescoes. The Menil Foundation then funded a careful two-year restoration of the paintings. These intact frescoes are unique in the western hemisphere.