Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas · Jules Verne, 1870
Where is Atlantis in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas?
Atlantic· west of Madeira
A night's walk from the Nautilus, which that day lay at 33°22′ N, 16°17′ W, west of Madeira. The ruins' exact spot is a guess.
After collecting gold from the galleons in Vigo Bay, Nemo takes Aronnax out at night in diving suits, across the sea floor and up the side of an underwater mountain lit by a volcano. Below them lies a ruined city: temples, an aqueduct, a harbour. Nemo picks up a piece of chalk and writes one word on a rock: ATLANTIS.
Verne gives the Nautilus's position that afternoon, at 33°22′ N and 16°17′ W, a hundred and fifty leagues from the nearest coast; that night Nemo takes Aronnax walking. Aronnax remembers Plato's story: a continent bigger than Africa and Asia together, between 12° and 40° north, sunk in a day and a night, whose highest peaks still stick out as Madeira, the Azores, the Canaries and the Cape Verde islands. That fits: the spot is west of Madeira, off North Africa.
This map puts the pin at that position. Atlantis itself is a legend, of course: no sunken city has ever been found out there.
See Atlantis on the mapMore about Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
- How big is the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas?
- How far is twenty thousand leagues?
- How big is the giant squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues?
- How deep did the Nautilus dive in Twenty Thousand Leagues?
- Is the Arabian Tunnel in Twenty Thousand Leagues real?
- Open the 3D map of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
- Take the “Where was this?” quiz