Could this vanished city offer a glimpse into the future?

Once a marvel of the ancient world, brimming with vitality, ambition, and visionary undertakings.

A sacred place where kings were deified in secret rites, and where Paris, the Trojan prince, brought the captured Helen of Troy – if the myths hold true.

But over 1,200 years ago, the earth shifted, and the city of Thonis-Heracleion was consumed by the sea.

For centuries, this ancient Venice existed solely in stories, until an unexpected adventurer transformed myth into truth.

Franck Goddio had spent most of his career in finance and economics – just another office worker immersed in numbers, while secretly fascinated by what lay hidden beneath the sea.

However, in the early 1980s, Goddio left behind the world of finance to follow his true calling: underwater archaeology. After mapping vast sections of the seabed near Alexandria, Egypt, he made an astonishing discovery: Beneath the waters of Abu Qir Bay, just east of Egypt’s second-largest city, his team uncovered a submerged landscape of temples, hieroglyphs, shipwrecks, and sacred sites.

Goddio had unearthed Thonis-Heracleion, a 7th century BC city named after Hercules that served as a major religious and commercial hub of the ancient world. Since its discovery in 2000, Goddio has been excavating the site, though only a fraction has been fully uncovered. In fact, on the morning of Dinogo’s visit to his floating research lab, his team had stumbled upon yet another shipwreck.

Despite the ongoing mysteries waiting to be unraveled, the question of how Thonis-Heracleion ended up submerged remains a more urgent issue for modern-day Egypt.

Experts generally agree that a combination of natural disasters led to the city’s downfall, with rising sea levels, land subsidence, and a series of earthquakes all contributing to its demise.

Today, just a few miles from this submerged city, Alexandria’s 4.5 million residents continue their daily routines, despite the growing number of similar environmental challenges.

Massive storms now flood entire neighborhoods, forcing residents to reach their homes by boat. The Egyptian government has warned that 13% of the country’s coastline could be threatened by rising sea levels. Meanwhile, farmers along the Nile Delta are struggling to cultivate crops on increasingly salty, parched land.

When Dinogo visited Goddio’s research vessel, the Princess Duda, we spoke with diver Eric Wartenweiler Smith about what it’s like to work in this underwater world beneath a bustling metropolis.

“On calm days, you’d surface and see people riding bikes or in horse-drawn buggies. You’d hear their voices and see all the buildings…,” he shared. “Yet, down below, there’s another city—the same city—that vanished. It makes you wonder: Do they know? Do they ever think about it?”

There’s a reason to question... and to be concerned.

When Thonis-Heracleion was a vibrant, thriving city, Egypt’s population was around 4 million. Demographers predict that by 2050, it will reach 150 million.

What will we lose by then? What will we discover? And how much of history are we destined to repeat?