A Pythagorean tiling or two squares tessellation is a tiling of a Euclidean plane by squares of two different sizes, in which each square touches four squares of the other size on its four sides. Many proofs of the Pythagorean theorem are based on it, explaining its name. It is commonly used as a pattern for floor tiles. When used for this, it is also known as a hopscotch pattern or pinwheel pattern, but it should not be confused with the mathematical pinwheel tiling, an unrelated pattern.

This tiling has four-way rotational symmetry around each of its squares. When the ratio of the side lengths of the two squares is an irrational number such as the golden ratio, its cross-sections form aperiodic sequences with a similar recursive structure to the Fibonacci word. Generalizations of this tiling to three dimensions have also been studied.

The Pythagorean tiling is the unique tiling by squares of two different sizes that is both unilateral (no two squares have a common side) and equitransitive (each two squares of the same size can be mapped into each other by a symmetry of the tiling).

Topologically, the Pythagorean tiling has the same structure as the truncated square tiling by squares and regular octagons. The smaller squares in the Pythagorean tiling are adjacent to four larger tiles, as are the squares in the truncated square tiling, while the larger squares in the Pythagorean tiling are adjacent to eight neighbors that alternate between large and small, just as the octagons in the truncated square tiling. However, the two tilings have different sets of symmetries, because the truncated square tiling is symmetric under mirror reflections whereas the Pythagorean tiling isn't. Mathematically, this can be explained by saying that the truncated square tiling has dihedral symmetry around the center of each tile, while the Pythagorean tiling has a smaller cyclic set of symmetries around the corresponding points, giving it p4 symmetry. It is a chiral pattern, meaning that it is impossible to superpose it on top of its mirror image using only translations and rotations.

A uniform tiling is a tiling in which each tile is a regular polygon and in which every vertex can be mapped to every other vertex by a symmetry of the tiling. Usually, uniform tilings additionally are required to have tiles that meet edge-to-edge, but if this requirement is relaxed then there are eight additional uniform tilings. Four are formed from infinite strips of squares or equilateral triangles, and three are formed from equilateral triangles and regular hexagons. The remaining one is the Pythagorean tiling.

This tiling is called the Pythagorean tiling because it has been used as the basis of proofs of the Pythagorean theorem by the ninth-century Islamic mathematicians Al-Nayrizi and Thābit ibn Qurra, and by the 19th-century British amateur mathematician Henry Perigal. If the sides of the two squares forming the tiling are the numbers a and b, then the closest distance between corresponding points on congruent squares is c, where c is the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle having sides a and b. For instance, in the illustration to the left, the two squares in the Pythagorean tiling have side lengths 5 and 12 units long, and the side length of the tiles in the overlaying square tiling is 13, based on the Pythagorean triple (5,12,13).

By overlaying a square grid of side length c onto the Pythagorean tiling, it may be used to generate a five-piece dissection of two unequal squares of sides a and b into a single square of side c, showing that the two smaller squares have the same area as the larger one. Similarly, overlaying two Pythagorean tilings may be used to generate a six-piece dissection of two unequal squares into a different two unequal squares.

Although the Pythagorean tiling is itself periodic (it has a square lattice of translational symmetries) its cross sections can be used to generate one-dimensional aperiodic sequences.