Underground Templar Caves | Lost Cities with Albert Lin

Ah! Eliezer? Yes. It's so nice to meet you. Welcome, welcome. This is beautiful! Yes! This is where the Templars actually hung out?

In here? No, no, no. This is not the Templar. We are in the right place, but in the wrong time. Let's go. If we want to see the Templar building, we have to go down beneath this church.

[music playing] Here? This is it? Yeah. Under this door, we are going to see another world. We [inaudible]. This is like out of a movie right now. Are you kidding me?

We're going to go into a secret door--

Yeah. --behind a junk shop? [key turning] Wow. Let's go.

What! Wow! This is incredible! Now we are in the right time, in the right place. Here we are in the 12th and 13th century. This is underground, buried crypt.

This is really where the Templar was 800 years ago. So creepy. I'm standing in a room that ancient, medieval knights, the Knights Templar hung out in?

Yes, they lived here more than 200 years. I bet they never thought there'd be a bionic foot on their floor. This is the first floor of the building.

But in the 13th century, the crusader church was above us. So we were just standing, a few moments ago, in another church right above me?

Mm-hmm. So there's church upon church?

Yeah. It's kind of crazy because when you stand down here, it doesn't look all that different from the church upstairs in terms of style. Because you have the arches--

The arches and everything, yes. But if you are looking carefully, the Templar masonry work, it's completely another architecture.

Wow. The stones are much bigger than the 19th century building. Look at that. It's very famous in the crusader period that a lot of stones has the masonry marks.

Whoa. So you see you this line-- Or maybe here, this one.

Oh, yes, exactly this one. So this is actually the mark of somebody's chisel?

Mm-hmm, form of the Templar. Ah, this is so cool! When you find something that you can connect to the people that actually built this building, this is what's so exciting for me.

Because you actually get to the person?

Yes, exactly.

[music playing] ALBERT LIN (VOICEOVER): Further below the modern city, about 10 feet beneath the crypt, are more vaults. The secret chambers, a medieval knights' crypt. Nuts.

ALBERT LIN (VOICEOVER): We've established that this was a Templar building, but I don't know what it was used for.

Wow! (QUIETLY) Wow. This is carved out of the earth, huh? (ECHOING) Hello! What is this?

This is for collecting rainwater. It's a huge, underground water tank. You can actually see the little channel where the water pours in from the rain, right there. The Holy Land is very, very warm. We are in the Middle East and you need the water.

ALBERT LIN (VOICEOVER): Eliezer has excavated three of these 25,000 gallon tanks so far. And he believes there are many more.