Greek underwater museum - 27 August, 2021

Greece has launched a very different kind of museum. It's an underwater museum and the first of its kind there. It had been planned to open last year but was delayed until now due to Covid-19.

Located below the sea of Peristera, near the island of Alonissos, the museum is an ancient shipwreck. Visitors scuba-dive to see piles of 2,500 year old wine pots on the sunken ship. Lisette Fredelund from Denmark did just that and imagined how life had been 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."

The museum also provides a virtual reality exhibition of the shipwreck for people who are unable or unwilling to scuba dive. They can then still enjoy the same experience. But, it is the mixture of diving and archaeology that appeals to Hans Jurgen Fercher from Austria.

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."

Dives with a guide cost approximately 95 euros. That's only 50 percent higher than just scuba diving for pleasure. But, the museum believes this idea of archaeological diving can become a sustainable type of tourism that benefits the local area.

Four more shipwrecks have recently been discovered in the area. According to Dive Centre founder Kostas Efstathiou, this will help turn Alonissos into a world renowned 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."