The Romans often paved the floors of their houses and public buildings.

The most magnificent and spectacular of these floors used a technique known as opus tessellatum and were made with small, different-coloured cubes of marble, stone, glass paste, etc. They were often arranged to form pictures.

The work was carried out by teams of specialized craftsmen using a painstaking technique.

Other common methods of paving were opus signinum, made of lime and a mixture of ground stone and ceramic, or opus sectile, made with fragments of marble.