Grand Square Flower Carpet Festival

A vast historic square opens beneath a bright sky, gilded facades and a domed palace framing the plaza on every side while crowds gather along its stone edges. Down the center stretches an enormous flower carpet, its mandala of magenta, teal, gold, and blue radiating out in concentric rings toward a wide staircase in the foreground. Kneeling volunteers work in small clusters across the design, sprinkling colored petals and sand from bowls and jars, smoothing patterns into place block by block. Onlookers lean over balconies and cluster along the sidelines to watch, dwarfed by the ornate buildings rising three and four stories behind them. Flags hang from windows and awnings shade the shopfronts lining the square. Each panel of the carpet holds its own repeating motif, so the finished design divides itself into sections a patient eye can trace one at a time.