We started from here, from the words of a prominent voice recounting the Adriatic, Predrag Matvejevic. We have chosen a single narrative voice – underwater archaeology – to recount the thousand tales of the Adriatic, and we have favoured stories that the sea has itself conserved on the seabed or washed up along its coastline: ancient coastal landscapes, settlements, structures of ports and landings, shipwrecks, harbour dumping grounds and findings without context. We have entered the lagoons and travelled up some of the rivers, to access the “extended” space of the Adriatic, in search of ghost ships and harbours swallowed up by emerging lands. Shipwrecks, milestones of sea routes, illustrate the flows of goods coming from different areas of the Mediterranean, with cargos that were assembled, divided and radiated out to the great emporia of the Adriatic, epicentres of trade networks, as takes place today in large trading centres.