# A vast ancient underground city, complete with shafts and spiral staircases, lies hidden beneath the Giza pyramids and mainstream science is ignoring it **Verdict: Contradicted.** In March 2025 an Italian research group said it had used synthetic aperture radar to detect enormous vertical shafts, spiral staircases and a city-sized complex more than 600 metres beneath the Khafre pyramid. The specific claim does not hold. It was never peer-reviewed, its dataset was not released for others to test, it was promoted with at least one image that was flagged as AI-generated, and the physics of the method does not allow radar to image solid rock at that depth. The Egyptologist Zahi Hawass called it completely wrong; the satellite-imaging archaeologist Sarah Parcak noted such imagery can be made to look like almost anything. Real subsurface features and genuine pyramid science exist, but the viral underground city does not. Category: Lost History & Ancient Mysteries · Era: 2020s · First circulated: March 2025, when an Italian team associated with the University of Pisa announced its Khafre radar findings at a press briefing and the claim spread rapidly across social media and tabloid coverage · Believed by: A large social-media audience drawn from alternative-history, ancient-mysteries and lost-civilisation communities; amplified by tabloid and viral video coverage, and boosted by long-running popular fascination with hidden chambers under Giza URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/giza-underground-city ## Summary In March 2025, an Italian team associated with the University of Pisa, including Corrado Malanga and Filippo Biondi, announced that a synthetic aperture radar analysis of the Khafre pyramid had revealed an astonishing hidden world below it: eight vertical shafts wrapped in spiral staircases, pipeline-like channels, and vast structures said to plunge more than 600 metres (about 2,000 feet) underground. Headlines called it a lost city beneath Giza. The claim went viral within days. It also collided almost immediately with the people who actually work on Giza and on remote sensing, who rejected it as impossible with the stated method and unsupported by any reviewable evidence. This case file separates the record, that a group made and publicised these claims, from the claim it rates, that a giant ancient city really exists beneath the plateau and is being ignored or hidden. On that claim, the verdict is debunked. ## The claim That a colossal, artificial complex, in effect an underground city with deep vertical shafts, spiral staircases, connecting chambers and pipeline-like conduits, lies concealed hundreds of metres beneath the Giza pyramids, that it was detected by radar scanning of the Khafre pyramid, and that mainstream archaeology is either overlooking or actively suppressing a discovery that would rewrite the history of the site. ## Origin and timeline - 2022: Filippo Biondi and Corrado Malanga publish work proposing that synthetic aperture radar (SAR) tomography can reveal internal features of the Great Pyramid. The paper circulates in the fringe-research space and lays the groundwork for the later Khafre claims, without wide mainstream attention. - 2025-03: The team announces, at a briefing and in accompanying materials, that SAR analysis of the Khafre pyramid has detected eight vertical shafts ringed by spiral staircases, connecting structures, and a complex extending more than 600 metres below the surface. They describe it in dramatic terms as a hidden underground world. - 2025-03: The claim goes viral. Tabloid outlets, YouTube channels and social-media accounts spread renderings of shafts and staircases plunging under the plateau. Coverage frames it as a possible lost city or an Atlantis-like complex beneath Giza. - 2025-03: Remote-sensing specialists push back publicly. Experts note that synthetic aperture radar images the surface and near-surface, not solid rock hundreds of metres down, and that the resolution and penetration being claimed are not physically possible with the method described. - 2025-03: The Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, former Egyptian Minister of Antiquities, dismisses the findings as completely wrong and baseless, saying the techniques used were neither scientifically validated nor approved, and that no such structures exist. - 2025-03: The satellite-imaging archaeologist Sarah Parcak, a pioneer of space archaeology, cautions that this kind of imagery can be processed and manipulated to appear to show almost anything, and that extraordinary claims require reviewable data and peer review, neither of which was provided. - 2025-03: Fact-checkers and journalists report that at least one widely shared image presented as supporting evidence of the underground structures appears to be AI-generated rather than a genuine radar product, further undercutting the claim. - 2025-2026: No peer-reviewed paper establishing the underground city appears, and no reproducible dataset is released for independent teams to test. The claim persists in alternative-history circles while remaining rejected by Egyptologists and remote-sensing scientists. ## The evidence, claim by claim - Claim: Radar scanning of the Khafre pyramid revealed vast shafts, spiral staircases and a city-sized complex more than 600 metres underground. Evidence: This is the core claim, and it fails on method. Synthetic aperture radar is a surface and near-surface imaging technique; it does not image solid limestone bedrock hundreds of metres down, and remote-sensing specialists said plainly that the depth, resolution and detail being asserted are not achievable with the described approach. There was no peer-reviewed publication, and no dataset was released for other groups to reproduce the result. An extraordinary reading of an image, without reviewable data behind it, is an assertion rather than a finding. - Claim: The supporting imagery clearly shows artificial structures, so the interpretation is sound. Evidence: Interpretation is exactly the weak point. Sarah Parcak, who built her career on analysing satellite and radar imagery of archaeological sites, warned that such data can be processed and enhanced until it appears to show almost anything the analyst is looking for. Human pattern recognition readily turns noise into staircases and chambers. Worse, fact-checkers reported that at least one image circulated as evidence was AI-generated, meaning some of the most striking visuals were not radar products at all. - Claim: Mainstream archaeology is ignoring or covering up a discovery that would rewrite Giza's history. Evidence: The relevant experts did not ignore it; they engaged and rejected it. Zahi Hawass, who has spent decades excavating and administering the Giza plateau, called the findings completely wrong and baseless and noted that the methods were not validated or approved. That is the opposite of silence. And archaeologists have every professional incentive to announce a genuine find under Giza, not to bury it; careers are made on discoveries there, not on suppressing them. - Claim: There is nothing under the Giza pyramids, so any subsurface feature vindicates the theory. Evidence: This misstates the mainstream position. Giza genuinely has documented subsurface features: rock-cut tombs, natural cavities, and the deep multi-level shaft known as the Tomb of Osiris (the Osiris Shaft) near the Sphinx causeway. Real voids have been found inside the pyramids too. The existence of some real underground features does not confirm a 600-metre artificial city; it shows only that the plateau has an ordinary, already-catalogued underground, which is very different from the viral claim. - Claim: Radar and scanning technology have already made real discoveries at Giza, so this one should be believed too. Evidence: Genuine remote sensing has made real finds, which is precisely why the standards are known. The ScanPyramids project used muon tomography, a validated particle-physics technique, and its results were published in peer-reviewed journals and independently corroborated, including a large void above the Great Pyramid's Grand Gallery. That is the model of how a real discovery is confirmed: a sound method, released data, peer review and replication. The Khafre underground-city claim met none of those tests. ## Why people believe it - Giza is genuinely mysterious and genuinely under-explored below ground, so the idea of hidden depths is not absurd on its face. Real tombs, cavities and shafts exist, and real scanning has found real voids, which makes a grand underground discovery feel plausible rather than impossible. - The claim was wrapped in the language of science. Terms like synthetic aperture radar, tomography and precise depths in metres lend an air of technical authority that most audiences cannot easily evaluate, so the assertion sounded rigorous even though it was never peer-reviewed. - It fits a powerful and pre-existing story. Lost-civilisation and Atlantis-style narratives about a forgotten advanced culture beneath the sands have circulated for generations, and the underground-city claim slotted straight into an audience already primed to expect exactly this kind of revelation. - The visuals were vivid and shareable. Renderings of spiral staircases and shafts plunging thousands of feet down are dramatic and easy to spread, and dramatic images travel far faster than the cautious technical rebuttals that follow them. - Distrust of official archaeology does real work here. A long history of famous figures guarding the Giza narrative, plus a general suspicion that establishments hide inconvenient truths, primes people to read expert rejection as proof of a cover-up rather than as informed correction. ## Open questions - What actually lies in the fully unexplored parts of the Giza plateau's subsurface remains a legitimate scientific question. There are real, catalogued shafts and cavities, and future validated surveys may map more of them, but that is ordinary archaeology, not confirmation of a giant artificial city. - How far non-invasive scanning can eventually see into and beneath massive stone monuments is a moving target. Muon tomography has already found real voids inside the Great Pyramid, and methods will improve, so the honest position is that some genuine subsurface detail is still to be mapped, by validated techniques and peer review, not by unreviewed viral claims. - The precise provenance of the specific images used to promote the Khafre claim has not been fully accounted for on the record, including which were purported radar products and which were AI-generated, leaving the evidentiary trail behind the announcement only partly documented. ## Sources - Have researchers really found a hidden underground city beneath Egypt's pyramids?, Euronews (2025): https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/03/26/have-researchers-really-found-a-hidden-underground-city-beneath-egypts-pyramids - Is there really a secret city under Egypt's Giza pyramids?, National Geographic (2025): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/is-there-a-secret-city-under-the-pyramids- - No credible evidence supports claims of vast underground structures found beneath Egyptian pyramids, Snopes (2025): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pyramids-of-giza-new-discovery-structures/ - Was a 'vast city' discovered beneath Egyptian pyramids?, Snopes (2025): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/structures-found-under-pyramids-egypt/ - Claims of a hidden city beneath the Giza pyramids meet scientific skepticism, The Washington Times (2025): https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/mar/27/claims-hidden-city-beneath-giza-pyramids-meet-skepticism/ - Man debunks recent Giza 'discovery' of 'hidden city' found under pyramids with 'undeniable data', LADbible (2025): https://www.ladbible.com/news/science/giza-pyramids-khafre-debunked-data-revealed-089360-20250416 - 'ScanPyramids' Big Void: a first look inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, Nature (2017): https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24647 Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. 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