Sepphoris
— — the mosaics the hill kept under the grass.
Not only on a wall.
“A limestone ridge in the Lower Galilee, six kilometres from Nazareth, where the Roman city of Sepphoris held the capital under Herod Antipas. The hill keeps its mosaics — the Dionysus House floor, the woman the diggers named the Mona Lisa of the Galilee, looking sideways across nineteen centuries. Around her, oaks and the long pale light the limestone gives back in late afternoon.
Sepphoris, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Sepphoris — known in Hebrew as Tzippori and in Arabic as Saffuriya — sits on a limestone hill about 286 metres above sea level in the Lower Galilee, six kilometres north-northwest of Nazareth. Under Herod Antipas, who rebuilt it after a Roman destruction in 4 BCE, it served as the capital of the Galilee. The site preserves a Roman theatre cut into the hillside, a colonnaded cardo, and a network of dwellings, cisterns, and ritual baths. It is now run as Tzippori National Park by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, with most of the central acropolis open to visitors year-round.
The hill is built of soft local limestone, easily cut and quickly weathered, which is why so much of Sepphoris reads as foundation lines and partial walls rather than standing rooms. The mosaic floors are the great exception. The Dionysus House, excavated in the 1980s by a Duke and Hebrew University team, holds a third-century banquet floor of more than two million tesserae. At its centre is a small female head the diggers named the Mona Lisa of the Galilee for the half-turn of her eyes. A separate fifth-century synagogue floor on the lower terrace carries a zodiac wheel and biblical scenes.
Tzippori National Park is open year-round, generally 08:00 to 17:00 in summer and to 16:00 in winter, with last entry an hour before closing. The 2025 adult fee was around 29 NIS, with discounts for children, students, and Israeli senior residents. The site is reached by car from Highway 79 between Nazareth and Hamovil Junction; a short paved loop connects the visitor centre, the Roman theatre, the Dionysus House, the Crusader fortress on the summit, and the synagogue mosaic. Most visitors spend two to three hours; carry water in summer, when the hill offers little shade.