The Museum’s Mosaic Collection includes nineteen pieces of mosaic floor from an Early Christian, three-aisled basilica which once stood close to the watercourse of the Ilissos River.  This church, situated to the east of the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, is thought to have been dedicated to the martyr Leonides and most experts date it to the fifth century.  The mosaics are richly decorated and executed with delicacy, refinement and charm.  Octagonal shapes enclose various geometric, plant and animal motifs, such as birds pecking at flowers, a stork pecking at a snake, etc.   Marble tesserae in a wide range of colours – white, black, red, dark red, grey, green and ochre – and a few made of glass, mainly in green and blue, were used to depict these decorative subjects.

    The Museum’s collection also contains parts of a mosaic floor from a late Roman villa in Athens, discovered in the excavation of a construction site between Dionysiou Areopagitou St.  and Propylaion St.  These pavement mosaics have been part of the floor covering in the entrance to the Museum since 1970.  Another fragment from a mosaic floor, dated to the first quarter of the fifth century and found on another construction site in Athens (at 67 Evripidou St.), belonged to a building which seems likely to have been a baths and now decorates the Museum courtyard.