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Underwater museum in Greece - 27 August 2021

A new type of museum has opened in Greece. It's Greece's first underwater museum. It was going to open last year but couldn't because of Covid-19.

The museum is an old damaged ship. It sank near the island of Alonissos 2,500 years ago. Visitors can now scuba dive to this location. They can see the hundreds of wine pots the ship was carrying. Doing this helped Lisette Fredelund from Denmark imagine what life was like then.

Lisette Fredelund: "It was with a different perspective. We are not watching only marine life or corals but watching ancient civilizations. I was just, while we were down there trying to imagine what it had been like being on a vessel transporting wine from one shore to another. It was just amazing."

Some people don't want to scuba dive. So they can try a virtual tour of the site. And they can see the same exhibits. But Hans Jurgen Fercher from Austria is attracted to the mix of diving and history.

Hans Jurgen Fercher: "It makes it special and unique that it’s a combination of diving and archaeological diving. It’s diving into history. It makes this place live and live again, so this is what touches me."

The cost of scuba diving with a guide is about 95 euros. This is 50 percent more than scuba diving just for fun. The museum hopes this kind of diving becomes more popular and helps the area.

Now, they have discovered four more old ships. Dive Centre founder Kostas Efstathiou thinks this will help make Alonissos a world famous centre for diving.

Kostas Efstathiou: "We are very excited to have another four wrecks in the following two years and that is really going to put Alonissos on the world diving map. We are going to have like an underwater safari of ancient wrecks."