 <p>If you want to insert arbitrary markup in a template, then use <code>structure</code> keyword:</p> <pre><code>&lt;div tal:content="structure variable_that_contains_html"/&gt; </code></pre> <p>but if you want to embed one PHPTAL template in another, then use <a href="http://phptal.org/manual/en/split/metal.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">macros</a>:</p> <p><em>macros.xhtml:</em></p> <pre><code>&lt;div metal:define-macro="greeting"&gt;Hello World!&lt;/div&gt; </code></pre> <p><em>page.xhtml:</em></p> <pre><code>&lt;body&gt;&lt;tal:block metal:use-macro="macros.xhtml/greeting"/&gt;&lt;/body&gt; </code></pre>