Museum of Ancient Ships of Pisa

This guide to the Museum of Ancient Ships of Pisa follows a sailor and his dog who went down with their boat in a lagoon near Pisa around the first century, and lay undisturbed until railway workers struck timber in December nineteen ninety-eight. What followed was an eighteen-year dig led by archaeologist Stefano Bruni, pulling more than thirty ships from the mud, some still fastened by their original copper nails, in a find reporters likened to a Pompeii of the sea. The guide dwells on what two thousand years underwater does to wood the moment it meets open air, and the delicate work now keeping these hulls from falling apart. Look for the reconstructed warship Alkedo as you walk the aisles.