City of the Day: 2,500-Year-Old Lost Greek City Finally Found

After 2,500 years of searching and not asking for directions, researchers have finally found the ruins of a lost village near the Greek town Vlochós, which is about 190 miles north of Athens. While the area was known and researched, many assumed this part to be irrelevant. Who puts a city under a hill, anyway? Researchers can be so stubborn.

However, a group from the University of Bournemouth and the University of Gothenburg decided against their better judgement and took a closer look at the little village under the hill and found a society of gnomes. Just kidding, they found the the remains of a lost city, reports The Daily Mail.

via Warner Archive

You can actually see the city’s fortress walls, towers, and gates from the air but not from the ground, explaining why no one noticed this before.

“We found a town square and a street grid that indicate that we are dealing with quite a large city,” said fieldwork lead Robin Rönnlund, a PhD student in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Gothenburg.

While they hoped to not do any serious excavation, the team already found some “ancient pottery and coins dating as far back as 500 BC.” According to The Daily Mail, the city was abandoned, perhaps due to Roman conquest, around 300 BC.