In the heart of southern Africa lies the lost city of Great Zimbabwe. Surrounded by giant walls standing 40 feet high and 16 feet thick, this medieval city was once home to up to 20,000 people. Rich reserves of gold and copper made the place fabulously wealthy but today few outside Zimbabwe have heard of the place. This is because for decades its story was hidden, buried by the colonial powers who controlled the area and who wanted to portray Africa as a backwards continent.

In this film we follow experts led by archaeologist Professor Shadreck Chirikure of Oxford University, born less than an hour from the Great Zimbabwe site, who are mounting a new excavation there to uncover the full story of this remarkable site. They want to know more about how it was built, how the inhabitants grew so wealthy, why it was abandoned, and why so few know its story? They reveal Great Zimbabwe wasn’t just an African city, but the centre of a spectacular African civilisation with trades route reaching as far as China. Lost City of Gold includes interviews with researchers across Africa and beyond as they piece together Great Zimbabwe’s extraordinary rise and eventual fall, and why its story was erased from the record.