An international team discovered evidence of unknown city 2500 years old. The ruins were found on Strongilovoúni hill next to the village of Vlochós, five hours north of Athens.

What was originally thought of as just another regular old settlement was actually the remains of towers, walls and city gates throughout the hill slope and summit. Besides that, it's hard to see anything underneath thousands of years of dirt. 

That region of Greece was considered an isolated area for a long time, so there wasn't a reason to properly examine the region for ancient cities. Also, because it's on a hill, it's not immediately visible like all those other famous Greek ruins, especially on cloudy days. 

The team is a collaboration between the Ephorate of Antiquities of Kardista in Thessaly and the Swedish Institute at Athens. The actual site is being explored by a team of Greek, English and Swedish researchers.

They had a problem in that they didn't want to damage the quality of the area with excavation. The way they're trying to get around that is with radar powerful enough to go through the ground. That's where the GPS receiver in the photo comes in.

They used high-res 3D photos taken from a drone. The drone took around 1500 vertical images of the ground below of all the rocks and shrubs of the ruins. 

The mountain of image data was then loaded into photogrammetry software. The pics were pieced together to make a rough 3D model that had the most precise features of the hill.  

They have found a town square and street grid that give more evidence to the hill at Vlochós being the site of a lost city . Within the first two weeks of work they had results: coins and pottery fragments from around 6th century BC!

The truth is, this is not a huge surprise. The locals have known there was something on Strongilovoúni for centuries. They even gave the area names like "Big Belt" and "the belted mountain" describing the remains of the hill fortifications.

What's different is that this new project has officially confirmed its status as a city. According to team leader Robin Rönnlund after one season of research the settlement "can now be upgraded to remains of a city of higher significance than previously thought."

There's going to be risks involved in the examination of the site. In September, heavy rains affected a lot of the hill. It was muddy and destroyed work they had done on top.

While they've already found some artifacts and might find more, the team is being incredibly careful about where they go. They are not going to collect any of the finds like the pottery piece. Some of them like the coins might make it out of the site, but they will not be shipped out of Greece and will stay in museums there.

They're investigating the city in hopes of filling out gaps of a violent time in Greek history. The Romans may have driven them out, so whatever they find underneath the soil of Strongilovoúni hill can very well change the history of the region as well.