What Time Reveals (8 Photos)

September 2, 2026

By Vidar

Time does some of its best work slowly.

A Roman floor reappears beneath modern London, roots redraw a Hong Kong pavement, and a mural in Poland keeps changing as its tree grows. These eight scenes make time visible.

🏺 Roman Mosaic Unearthed in Southwark — London, UK 🇬🇧

Archaeologists from MOLA uncovered this floor at the Liberty of Southwark site in 2022. MOLA describes the site’s mosaics as the best-preserved Roman mosaics found in London for more than 50 years. Thousands of stone tesserae form flowers, geometric patterns, and borders in what may have been a large dining room.

💡 Archaeology Fact: The floor was not dismantled tessera by tessera. According to MOLA’s conservation account, the team reinforced it with long-fibred paper and netting, separated it from its mortar bed with tools made for removing roof tiles, and lifted the tesserae as a flexible sheet.

More: See 7 Ancient Mosaics Found Beneath Modern Cities

🔬 “ORIGIN” — By ONUR in Le Locle, Switzerland 🇨🇭

ONUR painted ORIGIN in 2021 on Rue Jehan-Droz for EXOMUSÉE. EXOMUSÉE records the 32-square-metre mural and its themes of watchmaking, nature, and the transfer of knowledge; ONUR describes it as a tribute to care, precision, and people who build their surroundings with devotion.

💡 City Fact: Le Locle’s watchmaking identity is built into its street plan. UNESCO records an open plan of parallel urban strips where homes and workshops were intermingled, allowing the town to move from home-based craft to more concentrated factory production.

More: See the Complete ORIGIN Mural

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🚲 Children on a Bicycle — By Ernest Zacharevic in George Town, Penang, Malaysia 🇲🇾

In this photograph, a real bicycle is fixed to the wall, while fading paint and stains in the old plaster have become part of the children’s image. Zacharevic created the mural on Lebuh Armenian for George Town Festival in 2012, and Penang’s Buletin Mutiara documented his return to restore it in September 2024. The same report notes that the mural has no official title; Children on a Bicycle is the name by which it is commonly known.

💡 Project Fact: Zacharevic describes the 2012 George Town series as his first constructive public-art project. It was made four years after George Town was jointly inscribed with Melaka on the UNESCO World Heritage List for a multicultural trading heritage developed over more than 500 years.

More: See Ernest Zacharevic’s Penang Street Art Collection

🔗 Visit Ernest Zacharevic’s George Town project page

🌱 “The Legend of Giants” — By Natalia Rak in Białystok, Poland 🇵🇱

Natalia Rak painted The Legend of Giants in 2013 for Folk on the Street at aleja Józefa Piłsudskiego 11/4. Rak’s original project post confirms the work and festival, while Radio Białystok records the mural’s 18-metre height and the living tree beside the wall. In this later photograph, the canopy reaches the watering can, so the composition has kept changing since the paint dried.

💡 Philately Fact: In September 2014, Polish Post reproduced the mural on a 4.20-złoty stamp in its Street Art issue. The stamp was printed on fluorescent paper in an edition of 120,000.

More: See 10 Murals by Natalia Rak

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⏱️ “Falling Clock” — By Daniel Arsham in Los Angeles, California, USA 🇺🇸

At Dr. Maya Angelou Community High School, Daniel Arsham painted this clock illusion for the 2019 Maya Angelou Mural Festival. Artnet documented Arsham’s mural on the campus. The artist’s archive dates an earlier work titled Falling Clock to 2011; this Los Angeles mural was painted eight years later.

💡 Art Fact: Beyond murals, Arsham’s wider practice includes what Perrotin describes as “fictional archaeology”. These “future relics of the present” are contemporary objects imagined as though they had already been excavated from a distant future.

More: See Daniel Arsham’s Falling Clock Mural in Los Angeles

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💧 “La leyenda del tiempo” — By Badi Coloreando in Algeciras, Spain 🇪🇸

At the corner of Calle Duque de Almodóvar and Avenida Villanueva, a girl pours “the water of life” from a conch shell onto a paper boat representing the port of Algeciras. Europa Sur identifies the blue geometry as Mudéjar-inspired tracery, while Badi’s own post names the work and credits Asociación RecreArte Algeciras.

💡 Update Fact: The intervention continued after this photograph. In May 2026, Badi completed an extension with two guitars, hands keeping rhythm, and coloured fish along the building’s perimeter wall. It forms part of El Paseo de las Guitarras, an outdoor cultural route through Barrio de la Caridad.

More: See La leyenda del tiempo in Full

🔗 Follow Badi Coloreando on Instagram

🌳 Mondrian Roots — Photographed by Alex Hofford in Hong Kong 🇭🇰

The brick grid did not stop the banyan. Its roots followed the joints, lifted the pavement, and slowly drew a pattern that looks almost planned. Photographer Alex Hofford documented the result as the city and tree negotiated the same small piece of ground.

💡 Urban Botany Fact: The Chinese banyan, Ficus microcarpa, is common in Hong Kong and can establish itself in cracks, walls, and other masonry. Hong Kong’s Greening office also records its mutualism with fig wasps: the insects pollinate the enclosed flowers, while the fig provides a breeding site.

More: See the Mondrianish Banyan Roots (3 Photos)

🕰️ Victor Noir’s Tomb — By Jules Dalou at Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France 🇫🇷

At Victor Noir’s tomb in Père-Lachaise, repeated visitor touch has worn through the green patina on parts of Jules Dalou’s life-size bronze effigy, leaving the metal bright and polished. The Petit Palais records that Dalou made the tomb without charge and that it was inaugurated on 15 July 1891.

💡 History Fact: Noir was a journalist shot by Prince Pierre Bonaparte in 1870. His death made him a republican symbol against the Second Empire, and more than 100,000 people reportedly attended his funeral in Neuilly.

More: When Sculptures Feel Alive (14 Photos)