Nan Madol

Nan Madol is a city built on the sea: on the reef flat off Temwen island, on the south-east coast of Pohnpei, the Saudeleur dynasty raised between about 1100 and 1628 nearly a hundred artificial islets of coral rubble walled with columns of prismatic basalt — logs of black stone up to five metres long and several tonnes each, stacked header-and-stretcher like a cabin, quarried on the far side of the island and brought here by means no one has proved — and separated them with canals that fill with the tide, so that the place is walked at low water and paddled at high. Madol Powe, the upper town to the north-east, was the priests' and the tombs': Nandauwas, the royal mortuary, has outer walls seven and a half metres high and a courtyard within a courtyard, and is the most astonishing thing in Micronesia; Madol Pah, the lower town, held the chief's residence at Pahn Kadira and the administration; a seawall of the same basalt keeps the Pacific off the eastern edge. The Saudeleurs fell to Isokelekel from Kosrae, the city was abandoned, and the mangroves have been taking it back ever since — which is why it has been a World Heritage site in danger since the day it was listed in 2016. It is the Venice of the Pacific by the guidebooks' habit and the most mysterious ruin in the ocean by any measure; Kolonia, the small capital of Pohnpei state, is forty-five minutes away by the road that passes the falls of Kepirohi.

The traveller stays in Kolonia, arranges a guide and the landowners' fee through the hotel or the visitors' bureau, and comes to Temwen in the morning by the causeway and the road to the entrance, timing the visit to the tide — low water for the walk across the flats and through the islets to Nandauwas, or high water for the canoe along the canals, which is the better way to see the walls rise; gives Nandauwas the time it deserves and climbs to nothing, because the walls are fragile; stops at Kepirohi's falls on the way back for the swim; and, with a second day, adds Sokehs Rock above Kolonia, the Japanese guns on the ridge, the sakau ceremony in a village at dusk, and the surf and the dive of Palikir Pass. The state of Yap and its stone money, and Chuuk's lagoon of sunken ships, are the neighbours on the island-hopper.

The Guide's honesty: Nan Madol is a fragile ruin in a mangrove swamp — the walls are unstable, the coral rubble is loose, and the traveller does not climb, does not move a stone and does not go without a guide; the fees are the landowners' and the traditional leaders' and are paid without discussion; the mosquitoes are serious and the rain is a certainty; the roads and services of Pohnpei are simple, the flights are few and the island-hopper is the only way in from either side; and Nandauwas at high tide, seen from a canoe in the canal, its black walls going straight up out of the green water under the mangroves, is one of the sights of the Pacific that the traveller who has stood before it will not lose.