Hidden for Centuries (6 Photos)

The ancient mosaics beneath streets and soil

Four of these six mosaics turned up under ordinary places: a lane in Croatia, a London building site, a street near Verona and the site of a hotel in Antakya. The other two lie in a royal palace in northern Greece and a Roman house at Zeugma, Turkey.

🌿 Flowers Across a Palace Floor — Aigai, Greece 🇬🇷

One person cleaning the surface gives this floral floor its scale. The mosaic with the flower maidens belongs to the Palace of Aigai near Vergina, in the ancient Macedonian kingdom of Philip II.

🎭 The Muses, Four Meters Down — Zeugma, Turkey 🇹🇷

Eight portraits circle a ninth in the middle: these are the nine Muses. Excavation director Kutalmış Görkay describes how the room was found roughly four meters below ground, giving the Roman house its name: the House of the Muses.

📷 Photo: Ankara University

🌊 A Floor That Rolls Like a Wave — Antakya, Turkey 🇹🇷

It looks like someone shook out a patterned rug. This is solid mosaic: a 1,050-square-meter floor whose waves record movement in the ground, according to the Museum Hotel Antakya, built above the archaeological site.

🏙️ Roman London Below the Skyline — London, UK 🇬🇧

The Shard rises behind two archaeologists at work on a floor from Roman London. MOLA uncovered these mosaics in 2022 at the Liberty site in Southwark, where flowers and interlaced borders once decorated a large room, possibly used for dining.

💡 Archaeology Fact: MOLA’s field team recorded 2,959 layers and features during the Liberty dig, and its post-excavation team has since logged 1,928 special finds, according to its project update.

📷 Photo by Andy Chopping / MOLA

🧱 A Floor Beneath the Lane — Stari Grad, Croatia 🇭🇷

A few missing paving stones reveal a whole different floor. In Stari Grad on the island of Hvar, excavations documented by Stari Grad Museum exposed Roman rooms with geometric and floral mosaics dated to the second century CE.

More: More photos of the mosaics beneath Stari Grad

📷 Photo: Stari Grad Museum

🐚 Between the Gas Pipes — Montorio, Italy 🇮🇹

Modern pipes cross a shell-shaped pattern that was already here centuries before them. This fifth-century mosaic in Montorio, near Verona, was exposed during gas-pipe replacement work in 2022; it belongs to a late-antique residential complex known since the nineteenth century.