THE UNDERWATER MUSEUM OF CAESAREA MARITIMA is reviewed by Michael Luongo for Bloomberg.com. Excerpt:

In mid-August, just two days after a cease-fire halted the war between Israel and Hezbollah, I went to see the ruins. A few days earlier, cafe customers could see missiles flying over Haifa, about 35 kilometers (22 miles) away, though no bombs landed in Caesarea. On the day I visited, the place was almost deserted when I dove off the pier and plunged into the Mediterranean with my underwater guide Natasha.

Sunken Remains

The brackish green sea was as warm as the desert air; it also was silty, with sand and sediment floating around us. As we went farther out, the pressure increased, the temperature decreased and the currents got stronger.

Soon we spotted huge concrete caissons that were the port's foundations, serving as walkways and the ground floor of warehouses. Some are still solid, while others have been broken apart by earthquakes or waves.

The tops of some caissons have cross forms hashing their surfaces, hollowed out remains of the long-gone wooden beams used to mold them in the open sea. A concrete mix, using volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius, was poured into the wooden forms. Both the material and the method were innovations developed especially to create the port.