The Town Below
2009
Written by Raymond Collet
Directed by Raymond Collet
Collection The Skills of Archaeology
The cisterns of Alexandria have been known of since antiquity and have been admired by numerous travellers. Written accounts tell of several hundred, and some writers even going so far as to compare them to a veritable underground city. However, by the early 1990s, only one could be visited. It was then that the CEAlex decided to rediscover these cisterns using documents from the Graeco-Roman Museum, the memories of old Alexandrians, and research carried out during rescue excavations. Several dozens of these monuments have already been inventoried and, in some cases, studied. There are even plans to restore them and open them up to the public. This film takes viewers on a tour of the city's most beautiful cisterns, with a brief history of their development.