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Staff Writer Marta Bueno Arcos explores all things Mosaic art: its history, its craft, and well known works around the globe.
Mosaics are one of the oldest forms of art that are still visible in public spaces today. Made by arranging small pieces of material into images or patterns, mosaic art has existed for thousands of years across many civilizations. Mosaic making is a craft in which tiny colour tiles, which the ancient Romans called tesserae, are arranged in a particular pattern to create an image.
Traditionally, these images were quite varied, and could represent anything from geometrical decorative shapes to detailed landscapes, mythological scenes, or even moments of war and history. The choice of materials is also part of the artistry, glass can catch the light in unexpected ways, ceramic allows for precise colour, and natural stone provides texture and durability.
The oldest mosaics on record are from the 3rd millennium BC in Mesopotamian temples of the Ubaid period, made of stones, shells and ivory. The technique gained traction across the Mediterranean world, becoming especially popular in ancient Greece and Rome, where mosaic floors decorated villas, bathhouses and public buildings. Artists of the time were not only craftsmen but storytellers, embedding social, religious, and historical narratives into the floors and walls of public spaces.
One of the most famous mosaics in the world is the Alexander Mosaic. Discovered in Pompeii, it measures more than five metres in length and is made up of over four million individual tesserae and depicts the Battle of Issus. Despite being found in a Roman city, the work was created in a Hellenistic Greek style, showing the cultural influences that shaped mosaic art across the ancient world. The careful placement of the tiny stones allows the mosaic to capture movement, emotion and even reflections in armour, almost like a painting made entirely of stone.
Mosaics have also been used to represent important symbols and creatures. Serpents, for example, appear in many different traditions, including an Aztec mosaic sculpture of a double-headed serpent from the 1400s. These repeating symbols show how mosaics often carried cultural and mythological meaning beyond simple decoration.
Mosaics have also been used to tell stories and preserve history, such as the Queenhithe Mosaic in London. Stretching over 30 metres along the north bank of the River Thames, it shows a timeline of over 2,000 years of London’s history. Designed by artist Tessa Hunkin and created between 2011 and 2014 with the help of around 300 artists and volunteers, the artwork tells the story of the city from Roman times through the medieval period and into the present day.
In terms of mosaic art in Ireland, if you walk into Dublin’s National Archaeological Museum and look down, beneath your feet lies one of the city’s most beautiful examples of mosaic art. Below your feet lies an intricately designed nineteenth-century floor that depicts scenes from classical mythology. In the rotunda, a large circular zodiac mosaic invites people to find their own star sign, often leading to the same small ritual when visitors stand on their sign for a quick photo before exploring the museum.
From ancient Mesopotamian temples to museum floors and modern public artworks, mosaics are an art form that is one of the oldest and most diverse forms of creative expression, showing how small fragments of basic materials can come together to create powerful images. Thousands of years after the first tesserae were placed by hand, the art of mosaics continues to connect history, craftsmanship and storytelling one small piece at a time. Whether in a museum, on a city street, or in the hands of an aspiring artist, mosaics remind us that art is both a record of the past and a canvas for the present.