Interlocking Patterns at the Alhambra

Interlocking patterns or tessellations were used in Ancient Rome and in Islamic art such as in the decorative geometric tiling of the Alhambra palace. Tessellations form a class of patterns in nature, for example in the arrays of hexagonal cells found in honeycombs. Tessellation in two dimensions, also called planar tiling, is a topic in geometry that studies how shapes, known as tiles, can be arranged to fill a plane without any gaps, according to a given set of rules. These rules can be varied.