UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGY FIELD SCHOOL> The Port
The port of Sanitja has been inhabited by man since antiquity. Underwater archaeology allows us to better understand the maritime transit and the infrastructure of the port.
Sanitja is the safest refuge for sailors on the northern cost of Menorca. The first to occupy this port were the Romans when the conquered the Balearic Islands in 123 BC. They then built a military fort at Sanitja.
Near the soldier’s garrison, on the side of the port most protected from the strong winds, the city of Sanisera was founded shortly after the fort and was occupied until the year 600 AD. Posterior to the city, we know that there was a brief occupation of a small Muslim community because of the ruins of a small mosque located near the seashore in one of the coves of Sanitja.
Medieval nautical charts document the name of Sanisera which has served archaeologist in locating the site of the ruins of the abandoned roman city.
 The port of Sanitja continued to be occupied in more recent times. In 1787, a group of fisherman built a small factory for the fishing of tuna.
Because of the strategic location of the Cape of Cavalleria and of the port, during the British rein of Menorca, the British built a defense tower in 1800 to defend against the possible attacks of the French and the Spanish.
A lighthouse was built in the XIX century on the point of the Cape of Cavalleria, 90 meters above the sea level. The leaders of Menroca urgently petitioned to the Spanish government for this lighthouse in the northern most point of the island around 1850 because of the frequency of shipwrecks that occurred to those that sailed the routs from France or Spain around the northern coast of Menorca. Because of this, sailors called this area of coast “the Antichrist Coast.”).
The underwater archaeology research team of the Ecomuseum of the Cape of Cavalleria continue to strive for a better understand of all submerged ruins in the area, studying the importance of human occupation and development since Roman times.
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Underwater Archaeology field school