Marble tesserae paving with the inscription AVE SALVE. Museu Nacional Arqueològic de Tarragona.
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. 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.
Here we have a marble tesserae paving with the inscription AVE SALVE, a welcome greeting, from 1st century BC to 1sr century AC. It would have been part of the interior threshold of a door in a Tarraco domus.
