The first major city in sub-Saharan Africa was founded in what is now Nigeria. Ilé-Ifè, the sacred city of the Yoruba, was a center of African civilization. Until its decline. When the German collector and African explorer Leo Frobenius became the first European to reach the city of Ilé-Ifè in south-western Nigeria in 1910, the realistic portrait art he encountered led him to believe he had stumbled upon traces of the lost continent of Atlantis. A golden age in the African rainforest? In the era of imperialism and colonialism, nobody in Europe was willing to believe it. Yet in recent years, several research teams have examined the city’s rise, its trade relations, the daily lives of its citizens and, ultimately, its decline in greater detail. Whilst a team led by the Frenchman Gérard Chouin is developing a chronology of the city based on its pottery and tiled floors, Nigerian archaeologist Babatunde Babalola takes us on a treasure hunt around a glass factory.