In 1972, off the coast of Riace Marina in southern Italy, a diver discovered two life-size bronze statues lying on the seabed. They are rare intact Greek bronze sculptures that reveal advanced casting techniques and refined aesthetics dating to the Early Classical period of Greek art in the 5th century BCE.

In addition to bronze, these sculptures used copper for lips and nipples; silver for teeth; and calcite and glass for eyes.

We reached Reggio Calabria in the late morning, the Strait of Messina shimmering like a sheet of hammered metal. The museum sits quietly in the middle of it, silently holding its secret treasure.

Inside, the air changes. The Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia keeps the temperature low and the light soft, and our footsteps sound different on the polished floor. We follow signs down a short corridor, and then the room opens up.

Then there they are.

Statue B feels older, more measured, the weight of his body settling into the contrapposto with a kind of seasoned calm. His beard is more elaborate, his gaze more inward. Together they feel like two chapters of the same story — youth and experience, tension and restraint — frozen at the moment before something happens.

We circle them slowly. Everyone does. It’s instinctive. The bronze surfaces ripple with the faintest traces of the ancient casting process, and the inlaid eyes follow you with unnerving precision. We think about the ship that carried them, the storm that took them, the centuries they spent in darkness on the seabed. And then the diver in 1972, surfacing with a story no one believed at first.