FLOAT out beyond the Crusader city walls, Roman aqueduct and 19th-century mosque. Then descend through a cloud of quicksilver bubbles 20ft and 2,000 years to Herod The Great’s sunken harbour.
Here, just off Caesarea port, a unique underwater archaeological park opened yesterday, showcasing 80,000sq m of a sunken harbour built by the biblical king of the Jews for Caesar Augustus.

It is no ordinary “museum” — no chattering schoolchildren, no queues, no headphones, and the only sound that of boat propellers passing above your head as you swim around the “exhibits”.

“I am excited. I think anyone in the field of maritime archaeology would be,” said Dr Nadav Kashtan, a lecturer on ancient marine civilisations at Haifa University and one of the team who has brought the idea to life, with £60,000 from the Caesarea Development Corporation.