Pavlopetri

The account

Pavlopetri was trading with Minoan Crete before the pyramids of Mycenae rose, and the sea took it slowly, street by street, around 1000 BC. It lies in three metres of clear Aegean water: house walls, courtyards, tombs, a town plan you can swim above like a low-flying bird. No machine, no permit, no depth to speak of, just a mask, and five thousand years under your shadow.

Leads, where the trail points now

• The oldest submerged town yet found, roughly 5,000 years old, lying in shallow water off Laconia in Greece and mapped in detail by sonar in 2009.
• It is a protected underwater site with a complete town plan visible on the seabed; the work is documentation, not treasure.
• The lead is interpretation, since an intact Bronze Age street plan underwater is rare enough to be the prize itself.