Con đường Gốm sứ

Walk the Red River dikes in Hanoi, northern Vietnam, and you pass one of the longest murals in the world. Con Đường Gốm sứ covers those dike walls with ceramic mosaic for about six and a half kilometres. The Hanoi journalist Nguyễn Thu Thủy started the project, imagining the flood defences as a canvas for ceramic art.

Work began in 2007, with the Ford Foundation funding the first 450 metres of wall. Artists finished the mural in 2010 to mark the city's Millennial Anniversary. The mosaic tiles come from Bát Tràng, a village renowned for its porcelain. Decorative patterns draw on the Phùng Nguyên and Đông Sơn cultures and on the Lý, Trần, Lê and Nguyễn dynasties. Modern artworks and paintings of Hanoi appear in the mix too.

Vietnamese artists made the mural, and international contributors from cultural centres and embassies in Hanoi worked alongside them. The Goethe-Institut and the British Council are among them. In 2010, Guinness World Records recognised the finished wall as the world's largest ceramic mosaic, at 3,850 linear metres. New segments have followed: the Chilean artist Alexandro Mono Gonzalez added one, and the Sri Lankan Embassy sponsored another. Children's drawings share the same unbroken picture with the Đông Sơn motifs.