Holy hole in the road!

Hanging from a rope, Batman and Robin clamber up the wall of a burning building to save a victim from the flames.

Police watch their heroics from below and crowds of onlookers are held back by patrol cars.

This was the scene in a London street yesterday as an ingenious combination of reality and art had passers-by doing double and triple takes.

The caped crusaders and their backdrop are sketched in chalk. The stunning 3D effect is an illusion, as the canvas is the flat surface of the pavement.

The artist himself, Julian Beever, poses against a wall, perched on the ledge he has drawn into his masterpiece - and suddenly becomes an integral part of the scene.

Beever, 46, known as the Pavement Picasso, has created a series of similar mind- blowing images in everyday locations around the world.

He uses a camera lens trained on his work surface to help him visualise and conceive an idea. Then he goes to work, drawing in incredible detail and playing tricks with the way our minds 'read' perspective to create an impression of depth on the flat surface of the paving stones.

His sketches, viewed from a particular point, give a convincing illusion of a 3D scene below the street surface, leaving onlookers bemused and incredulous.

Beever, from Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, is a former Punch and Judy showman who discovered his talent as a street artist in the 1980s and turned to 3D scenes after working in Belgium.

He is now based in that country but has chalked pictures in England, Australia, America, France, and Germany.

His other works have included a swimming pool chalked on the street so realistically that shoppers swerved to avoid it and Coca-Cola bottles and sunbathing women which appear to spring out of the ground, ready to trip you up.