The Lost City of Heracleion

For over a thousand years, the port city of Thonis-Heracleion was a myth, a place mentioned by ancient writers but lost beneath the Mediterranean off Alexandria. In 2000, divers rediscovered it, and the seabed of Abu Qir Bay gave up colossal statues, temple ruins, gold jewellery and dozens of shipwrecks, an entire Egyptian city swallowed by the sea after earthquakes and subsidence.

The submerged ruins themselves lie underwater and are not a walk-up site, but their spectacular finds, including a five-metre statue of the Nile god Hapi and inscribed stelae, surface in Alexandria and Cairo museums. It is one of archaeology's great modern stories, a reminder of how much of ancient Egypt still lies hidden beneath the waves.