Ancient Megastructures Collection (2009)

Discover the secrets of revolutionary structures in Ancient Megastructures. Certain landmarks have captured the imagination and awe of modern-day architects and engineers around the world as they work to solve the mystery of how their ancient forebears were able to construct such beautiful, timeless and revolutionary structures with none of the machines and materials available to modern engineers.

List of World Heritage sites in this episode.

Now in its 2nd Season, the story of archaeology fascinates both laymen and professionals. In these installments we accompany Ernst Herzfeld on his last expedition to Persepolis in 1923; we travel to Mexico with the man who cracked the code of the Aztec calendar; we visit the greatest pre-industrial city on earth at Angkor; we join Isidoro Falchi as he discovers proof of the existence of the Etruscans; and we watch Alfred Merlin found the discipline of marine archaeology when he discovers shipwrecks in the Mediterranean..

Mecca, the city that welcomes close to a quarter of a million pilgrims every fortnight, and the birthplace of Islam's founder. The Seven Wonders of the Muslim World meets the man who massages the weary feet of the faithful, the muezzin who makes the call to prayer and the head of the religious police. The programme also talks to the pilgrims as they arrive in Mecca, to help understand the thinking of modern Muslims and their deep connections with this holiest of Muslim shrines.

After the fall of Rome, Italy fell into a dark sleep, and wasn't reawakened until the 11th century. Autonomous city-states emerged and these tiny republics began to revitalize their cities and build on a massive level not witnessed since the rise of Rome. In the late 15th and 16th centuries, alliances among various city-states continually shifted as foreign superpowers tried to sink their claws into Italy.

Dan Cruickshank travels across the world, celebrating different types of architecture and showing how our buildings reveal our aspirations, our ingenuity and our beliefs. In each programme, buildings from all over the world are dramatically juxtaposed, revealing unexpected connections between very different types of architecture.

Historian Dan Cruickshank is invited through the closed doors of six of Britain’s greatest private houses in an illuminating and surprising journey through our architectural history. hese fascinating buildings remain private homes and closed to the public, but their owners have allowed Dan Cruickshank to roam the corridors, tease out each home’s story – who built them, lived in them and lost them – and uncover tales of excess and profligacy, power and ambition.