Monday, May 21, 2007

Portuguese Sidewalk Mosaics

If you ever visit Portugal or one of its former colonies, you will notice that the Portuguese don't simply lay down concrete sidewalks. Instead their streets are decorated with beautifully patterned limestone mosaics. Apparently this started in the mid 1800s after the completion of a wave design in Lisbon's Rossio Square. Eventually this fad spread throughout Portugal and its colonies.

Our friends HuQing and Kurt Piemonte recently visited Macau - an area near Hong Kong which was administered by Portugal until 1999 and, like Hong Kong, transferred to China as a "special administrative region." We just posted some of their photos of the street mosaics in the Mosaic Atlas which you can see here.

The Mosaic Atlas has many other examples of Portuguese street mosaics including:


Lisbon - photo by Brian McMorrow


Madeira (our photo)

Coppacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro (photo by John O'Brien)

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