I'm using the ExtJS framework which has a bulk of js and css files that are used for all apps. I intend to share these between a number of web applications (different war files). For this reason I would like to serve ExtJS js and css directly from the web server, in my case Tomcat6, which can be used to serve static files, as in this helpful link. Therefore I put my files under /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/ROOT/extjs/. The static files that are directly under that directory are served correctly, e.g. /extjs/ext.js correctly serves the file at /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/ROOT/extjs/ext.js. However files in lower-level directories, for example /extjs/welcome/css/welcome.css, which should serve the file at /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/ROOT/extjs/welcome/css/welcome.css, return a 404. TL/DR Tomcat serves static files only at top-level directory. A 404 is returned for files deeper in the hierarchy. Config file contents: server.xml application's web.xml