DAN CRUICKSHANK: I'm on a journey to see architecture shaped by disaster.
A great and ancient city engulfed by calamity.
A wartime attack that laid waste a Baroque masterpiece.
A city that lives in the shadow of imminent earthquake.
And one of the wonders of the world threatened by violent conflict.
The city of Dresden on the river Elbe in eastern Germany.
Dresden was known as the Florence on the Elbe
because of the spectacular Baroque architecture
created here in the 18th century.
It was the ultimate expression of the city as a coherent work of art.
With monumental public buildings and more humble private buildings
coalescing to create a place of outstanding beauty.
Before World War II,
Dresden had survived both bombardment and modernisation.
It stood as one the world's most intact historic cities.
In February, 1945,
Dresden was bombed in one of the most savage aerial attacks
of the Second World War.
75% of the buildings in its historic core
were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
The Allies' aim was to undermine German morale
to hasten the end of the war.
To do this, they would attack a great German city
virtually untouched by bombing.
So from the night of February the 13th
to the afternoon of the 15th,
3,900 tons of high explosives and firebombs
were dropped on Dresden.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
As many as 35,000 people perished.
The centre of Dresden was devastated.
Miraculously, Dresden's most beautiful building,
the Frauenkirche, the Protestant Church of Our Lady,
was still standing when the last bombers left.
The stone exterior of the fire-gutted Frauenkirche
simply collapsed.
The bombing of Dresden
remains one of the most controversial actions of World War II.
The people of Dresden believed the city would be safe
because of its beauty,
and because it wasn't a crucial part of the German war machine.
But the Allies argued the city was a centre of communications
and arms production.
Dresden certainly wasn't entirely innocent,
but it was stunningly beautiful.
And did its bloody destruction end the war more quickly?
Did it save the lives of many Allied soldiers?
Or was it simply a war crime
to rank alongside the crimes committed by the Germans and the Japanese?
This is a question that is much debated and will never be fully resolved.
But what seems clear to me
is that total war, by its very definition,
is immoral, inhumane and unethical.
As the war ended in Europe, Dresden came under communist control.
East Germany became the GDR,
the German Democratic Republic.
At first, the communists were sensitive to the need for restoration.
But by the late '50s, they'd embraced hard-line modernity.
The centrepiece of the GDR vision
for the historic heart of Dresden
is this, this mighty road that divides the old town
into two parts.
This road is three times the width of the road that was here before 1945.
I suppose it's meant to symbolise socialist progress.
Along this road were grouped the major new buildings of the socialist regime.
Including this, the People's Palace of Culture,
completed in 1968.
While all this was being built,
the re-creation of historic, aristocratic and bourgeois Dresden
was off the agenda.
(COMMUNIST CHOIR SINGING)
In 1989, the Iron Curtain fell.
Germany was reunified.
And in the euphoria that followed,
there was a passion to re-create the lost dream of Dresden.
For nearly 50 years, the Frauenkirche,
Dresden's own St Paul's Cathedral,
was left a pile of rubble.
But in 1992, a decision was taken to rebuild this 18th-century masterpiece.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
It's amazing, against all the odds, this mighty domed church
once again presides over the centre of Dresden.
This is more than simply an archaeologically correct recreation.
It's more of a radical repair.
Because 45% of the stones are the original,
salvaged from the site.
Which explains its somewhat mottled appearance. Which is great, I think.
So the outside is fine. What about the interior?
Will it have power? Will it have spirit?
This is sensational.
A brand new, early 18th century Baroque interior.
We're seeing this as it was intended to be seen
in the 1730s,
full of colour, light and wit.
The stone and the timber
is marble painted.
Amazing. And lots of gilding.
Nothing here is quite what it seems. Very theatrical.
In front of me is the altar.
And this is very moving, indeed.
Around 8% of it is original.
Nearly 2,000 fragments found amongst the ruins
used to reconstruct it. A great jigsaw puzzle.
An amazing piece of work. You can see at the back, there,
the stone is damaged from the fire that raged here.
The money for this came from around the world.
The altar, for the whole church, all this,
is very much an act of reconciliation.
And now the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche
has stimulated the reconstruction
of much of the historic heart of Dresden.
Old buildings are more than merely masonry and mortar.
They're a memory, an idea, expressed through their design.
And even when the stones of the building are scattered,
the idea lives on through archaeological evidence,
through drawings, through photographs.
And that building can be reborn.
The destruction, the suffering of Dresden was exceptional.
Therefore, its reconstruction must be exceptional.
If the centre is rebuilt
with gusto and with conviction,
and that could mean the removal of inappropriate modern buildings,
then this great city centre will live once again
and the wounds of the war will finally be healed.
I'm driving through the Syrian desert.
In the past, this vast, arid land
was dominated by one of the world's greatest cities.
For nearly a thousand years,
the once great and beautiful trading city of Palmyra,
the Bride of the Desert,
a jewel of classical architecture,
lay abandoned, forgotten, engulfed by sand.
It was the victim of a catastrophe
that shook the ancient world.
A shocking example of how far
the high and mighty could fall.
Palmyra flourished as a colony
under Rome's control for nearly 300 years.
But in the third century A.D.,
the city began to break free from Roman rule.
In 267 A.D.,
Zenobia became queen.
She's now a character surrounded by myth.
Said to have been ruthless, ambitious,
a lover of the arts, highly intelligent
and, of course, very beautiful.
Under Zenobia,
Palmyra enjoyed power and prosperity.
A golden age.
The wealth of Palmyra was based on commerce.
It dominated one of the great trade routes of the ancient world.
Silk from China, precious purple dye,
all passed through the city.
This is the main street of Palmyra,
the colonnaded street.
It was a processional route but also the main shopping street.
Behind the columns were set individual shops.
And on the columns are these little brackets
upon which sat statues of the civic notables,
of men who'd invested in Palmyra.
Really, this street is a monument
to the merchants of the city.
On that bracket stood a statue of Queen Zenobia.
And she had a very bold vision for Palmyra.
The city's wealth had given it power and pride.
And she wanted the city to be independent of Rome.
Indeed, she wanted Palmyra to become mistress of its own empire.
In 271 A.D.,
Zenobia freed Palmyra from Rome
and invaded Egypt and Asia Minor,
both part of the Roman Empire.
But Zenobia's ambition was soon challenged.
The emperor Aurelian sent his troops to reclaim his conquered territories.
Zenobia's army was defeated in Asia Minor.
A Roman attack on the city now looked inevitable.
This might look like a pile of rubble,
but these stones tell a desperate story.
After her defeat, Zenobia retreated back to Palmyra
and here, in haste, she fortified the centre of the city
to create a bastion of inner defence,
to await the fury she'd unleashed.
And this is part of her defensive system,
known to this day as Zenobia's wall.
In 272 A.D.,
Aurelian's army surrounded the city.
During the siege, the people must have gathered here,
in the courtyard around the temple
to their great god, Baal.
They'd have prayed, offered up animal sacrifices,
pleaded for divine intervention
to help them in their struggle
with the Roman legions just over there, outside the city walls.
You can imagine the citizens of Palmyra
standing right here, crouching by these columns
day and night. Fear, trepidation.
Wondering what on earth they'd done
taking on the might of Rome.
These stones were originally placed high up on the temple.
And this one contains some rather amazing detail.
It shows here, three veiled women,
revealing that in the Middle East
women were veiled for at least 600 years
before the coming of Islam.
Also, the decoration here is strangely prophetic.
This stone was carved hundreds of years before Zenobia's time,
but it seems to capture the moment during the siege when she,
mounted on a camel, here's a camel,
and escaped from the city seeking assistance.
But as Zenobia fled east,
she was caught by the Romans crossing the river Euphrates.
With the Queen captured, the people must have felt that all their prayers,
their sacrifices, had been in vain.
The gods had deserted the temples,
abandoned the city.
There was nothing left to do now but surrender.
The ultimate fate of Zenobia is uncertain.
It's likely Aurelian took her back to Rome
where she was imprisoned in a villa until her death.
But her city was to have a more tragic end.
After just a few months of Roman occupation,
the citizens of Palmyra rose again.
So Aurelian returned to Palmyra, full of fury.
He crushed the city.
He let his troops pillage it.
They raped, they stole the treasures from the temples,
they massacred its citizens.
This was the end of Palmyra as a great city.
It's sobering to contemplate the destruction wrought by...
By time, by neglect, by the elements.
To see the ambitious works of man
laid in the dust.
"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
But these are no mute ruins,
not mute stones.
One stands here in the evening as the sun goes down,
and one can hear echoes of the past, really.
Looking down this great street of trade, one can imagine
the caravans, the camels, the merchants.
It's all strangely alive. Very evocative.
My goodness, one can almost feel their presence.
On America's West Coast
is one of the great cities of the world.
San Francisco is celebrated for the beauty of its setting,
its culture and quality of life.
But lurking beneath its streets
is a permanent threat.
San Francisco is waiting for what everyone here calls,
"The Big One".
There's a 62% chance that a major earthquake
will hit this area within the next 30 years.
Which means an earthquake is nearly twice as likely to happen as not
within the lifetime of the adults living down there below me.
Indeed, an earthquake could happen right now, in which case,
those buildings, designed to offer shelter and protection,
will be turned into killing machines.
But living with this threat isn't as straightforward as it might seem.
DAN: So what have you done to prepare for an earthquake?
-Absolutely nothing. -Oh, I'm totally unprepared.
I'm worry, but nothing I can do it.
I have water stockpiled, I have food stockpiled.
-I have some water, but that's about it. -I don't even have that.
My husband, I know, keeps, like,
jugs of water, like, under his dresser,
which kind of annoys me, because we live in a really small apartment.
-Denial. -DAN: Yes, yes.
It's something that Americans largely live in about a lot of things.
Berkeley University Stadium sits astride one of the Bay Area's major faults,
marking the collision of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates.
It runs down the middle of the stadium, bisecting it like a coffee bean.
So when I stand here, I'm standing astride one of the major cracks
in the Earth's crust.
The stadium structure is fragmenting,
caused by the constant movement of the tectonic plates.
This is known as "creep", and it's gradually pulling the stadium apart.
And with pressure building beneath the surface,
at some point creep will become quake.
And it's all happened before.
Just before dawn, on the 18th of April, 1906,
a massive earthquake led to catastrophic fires.
Over 3,000 people died, and a quarter of a million were left homeless.
One of San Francisco's greatest monuments,
City Hall was a casualty of the 1906 quake.
It was re-built in 1915, but how will the new building escape a similar fate?
If you look closely, you can see a clue.
City Hall no longer rests on the ground.
Eric Elsesser is the man who's masterminded this feat.
I'm about to take a tour of the extraordinary cavity he's created
between the building and the ground.
Oh, my God!
Down here, there's a vast network of sophisticated shock absorbers,
or isolators.
DAN: Now, what exactly does it do, this open space?
This is the big isolator space,
where all the isolators for the building are, 530 of them.
And they basically protect the building.
So, Eric, how do you get these isolators in place?
Basically, the entire building was jacked up. Not all at one time,
but in pieces, basically about 30 or 40 jacks at a time,
and one isolator per day was installed.
So they're taking the total weight of the building.
So how far could the building move before the catastrophe?
I mean, several feet?
Well, we figure that it would be 30 inches in each direction.
So that's basically six feet.
So what would happen if an earthquake struck right now?
-What would happen to us? -We would be just fine.
And the building would move a lot above us, it might even bump your head.
DAN: But we would be kind of all right.
ERIC: I think. You'd be in for a good shock, but it's all right.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
DAN: But away from the prestige public projects,
the city has a more fundamental problem,
ordinary people's homes.
Our biggest concern is the typical building style here,
is we have a ground floor that's a garage.
-We can see that all around here. -DAN: Yeah.
And above it there's typically several floors of living.
We call these buildings soft stories.
They're fine as long as the load is vertical,
just the weight of the building, but as soon as you start shaking it,
there's no resistance, sheer resistance.
There's nothing being done to make sure houses like this are upgraded?
California has the strictest building codes
for seismic safety in the country.
However, they don't apply retroactively.
But what would happen to areas like this?
We would probably have about a half a million people homeless
throughout the Bay Area, and anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 people
could be killed, depending on the time of day.
Despite great human ingenuity, the city of San Francisco remains
terribly vulnerable to the mighty forces of nature.
The people here have to learn to live with the near certainty of disaster.
They don't know the hour, they don't know the day, but they know,
sooner or later, it will come.
Herat Airport, in the west of Afghanistan.
I'm trying to reach the legendary Minaret of Jam,
one of the architectural wonders of the Islamic world.
A spectacular monument threatened by warfare and neglect
for nearly 800 years,
is now at greater risk than ever before.
In recent years, few people have been able to visit the minaret.
I can't be sure what state I'll find it in.
My best chance of getting to the minaret
is to win the trust and protection of the local police.
I'm going to meet the Herat Chief of Police, Shafiq Fazli.
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
OFFICER: Twenty people.
-Twenty? -OFFICER: Yeah.
Twenty? Right.
An escort of 20 policemen is more than I expected.
But just before I arrived, a group of Koreans were kidnapped
by the Taliban near Ghazni, and two of the party executed.
So the authorities are nervous about my trip.
I need to talk to the most senior policeman in western Afghanistan,
Mudine Yawa.
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
We were thinking, obviously, be advised, but to try and get there before dark,
so we imagine we'd have to leave about 4:30 tomorrow morning?
We have the green light to travel, but we don't know when.
I meet up with my security advisor, and former British soldier, David Holly.
We head back to our hotel, but Hanif, our interpreter,
gets an unexpected phone call.
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Now, a sudden call from the Chief of Police, a change of plan,
a dramatic change of plan. We've got to leave now, with them.
(HANIF SPEAKING FAINTLY)
Perhaps security is just picking up.
...whenever you are going, that is the best time, opportunity for you
to grasp it, with us, to go.
-He will give us accommodation tonight? -HANIF: Yeah.
Because we're not gonna make Jam tonight.
There are foreigners leaving, engineers are leaving.
We will find you suitable rooms...
DAN: Is it really a debate for us to have? We are being told
what we've got to do. He's not really asking our opinion.
HANIF: You have come here to go to the Minaret?
-Yes, that's indeed right. -If that's the plan,
please, come, this is the good time for you.
Okay, this... They are... They are our security, we rely on them
for protection and advice. If they're saying this is the best way,
then I guess we have to do it.
HANIF: This is unexpected for us now.
DAN: Yeah, yeah, it's good deception, good deception.
From my point of view, it would be safer if you are travelling
with such big bosses, like Chief of Zone, Chief of Police...
DAN: Well, except, we become a bigger target, but...
No, no, because, you see, this area is not, except the robbers, bandits...
-Yeah. Yes. -...and there is no Taliban activity
in this area, so this is, from my point of view, safer.
I love it, yeah. It's amazing. "No, no, no, no danger at all.
-"But, have 50 guards." -Yeah.
Fifty guards just in case.
Here they come. Okay, well, the position now is very interesting.
Just over an hour since we got a call saying we had to go to Jam tonight,
the Chief of Police we met earlier is himself going.
And this, I think, is our convoy coming up, quite heavy weapons.
I noticed some rocket launchers, and we're on the road to Jam. Incredible.
We head out into the desert with a convoy of 12 police vehicles.
Jam is 200 miles away from Herat, in Afghanistan's central highlands.
On these tracks, it's a journey of up to 14 hours.
After two hours' driving, there's a problem,
and our convoy is forced to stop.
It's starting to get dark, and the police are nervous.
So they post guards on high ground while the tyre is changed.
By the time we messed about with fuel and air...
-Yeah, yeah. -...we actually left at 1700,
and we've got to that village, Marwah, in 75 minutes.
-Yeah, not bad. -It's pretty good.
So that's 75 minutes, that's an hour,
and then it's another hour and a half to our destination tonight.
That's daylight.
DAN: It'll be dark. It's gonna be dark now, isn't it?
-We're gonna have to slow down at night. -Right.
We can't carry on at this speed. We're doing very well at the moment.
So maybe another two-and-a-half hours from here in daylight,
maybe add another half an hour for night-time driving.
-Okay. -It's not the end of the world, is it?
Well, as things are going, not a bad plan so far.
So we'll have... We're going to have about, what, nearly an hour in the dark,
-aren't we? Which is not good. -Minimum. Minimum, I think.
-Yeah. -Yeah, we're gonna have to slow down.
-Okay. -'Cause of these...
-The holes, and everything else. -Yeah.
Hi, very good. Good man.
And with a rocket... Grenade launcher. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it's a 40mm grenade launcher we're talking about.
Okay, thank you. Right. The tyre's done. Back on the road.
Back in the cars and get to our destination not too long after dark.
Driving through the dark, it's a relief to arrive at the village
where we're to spend the night.
We're now nearly halfway to Jam.
So, five-hour journey from Herat. Not bad.
They're charming chaps. Hello. Hello.
(GREETING IN ARABIC)
-Oh, yes. -How are you?
Very well, and thank you very much for such a splendid escort.
-Very, very good. -And so many people.
Thank you very much.
The village chief invites us to dinner.
We're in the main building in this village, the name of which
I still haven't found out. Where, actually, where are we?
What is the name of this little village we're at?
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
-Chesht-e Sharif. -Chesht-e Sharif.
Chesht-e Sharif. Chesht-e Sharif.
This is the main room of the house, the main house.
We're having a splendid banquet, we've had some vegetables and rice.
This is splendid chicken.
Mmm.
My God. Very tasty.
Very good, very strong taste. Very strong taste. Gosh.
You try some.
(CHUCKLES)
(PEOPLE CHATTERING)
We got up at 5:00, meant to be on the road to Jam by 6:00,
but it's 6:45 and we're still here.
Trouble is, the tyre over there got damaged on the road here.
And we can't seem to mend it.
The police are getting very edgy.
This village is regarded as a medium risk,
but that's relatively high for them.
The people here are not particularly happy.
The officer in charge of our party is getting very fractious.
He's over there, marching around being very angry.
It's not good. It's not good.
The more grumpy he gets, the less time we'll have at Jam, I fear.
Well, we're back on the road now, making good progress.
The atmosphere is interesting. The police are very anxious.
They're rushing on ahead. Quite hard for us to keep up with them.
A little bit absurd, really. They're up there, making clouds of dust.
The track becomes narrow, threading through steep gorges.
I know we're close, but after such a long journey, what am I going to find?
My God, and there it is.
Crikey, it looks absolutely fantastic.
Absolutely perfect,
this image of delicate perfection.
Reminds one what a great country, what a great empire there was here once.
This building is not only one of the most
magical, mysterious and beautiful buildings in the world,
it's also one of the most architecturally
and historically important.
It's one of the tallest and earliest of the great minarets.
Indeed, it's the only early minaret that hasn't been over-repaired,
over-restored, it's authentic, fantastic.
Also, it's the last significant architectural reminder, survivor
of a once great and mighty empire.
The minaret, built in the 1190s and standing 60 metres high,
is a memorial to the Ghurid Empire, which stretched across
modern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North India.
Some believe the minaret marks the site of the Ghurid summer capital,
the legendary Firuzkuh.
(GROANING)
The mountainsides are pockmarked with robber holes,
that is, illegal excavations carried out by looters. They're all around me,
two or three in front of me here. Now this one... This one... Good Lord!
Look at this one. These are meant to have been carried out by
people during the Taliban times, about 10 years ago, but I fear
these are more recent than that. And here we see incredible evidence
revealed by this desperate looter. Look, there's a great arch there.
A massive building on this mountainside, good evidence of this being
the lost city of the Ghurids.
A great structure here, covered, I suppose, through mud that's fallen
during various landslides during the centuries and buried the foundations.
And what's more, look.
A looter has discarded an artefact.
So if that's thrown away, one just wonders what on earth
was found and carried off. Strange thing, man-made, clearly.
A bit of a pot. Clay, it is.
A bit of architectural decoration, perhaps?
Well, I'll put it back. This is where it belongs.
But, I say, a sad and tragic business.
The looters did this mostly because they're poor.
The poor are forced to pillage their own culture
to live, to find objects to sell to the Western art market, ultimately.
We are destroying our own history.
Because objects removed from here, removed from their context,
are robbed of meaning.
And they make it very hard to untangle
the complex meaning of this location certainly...
It's a tragedy taking place before our eyes.
And we, the world community, seem to be unable to do anything about it.
The looters have robbed the valley of much of its archaeology,
but the message on the minaret remains.
The lower portion is covered with text,
organised as a surface ornament.
And the text is the entire 19th surah, or chapter, of the Qur'an.
It's a chapter entitled "Maryam", and it tells the story of Mary,
of Jesus Christ and the prophets
venerated by both Muslims and Christians.
So this text here, this minaret, is preaching tolerance,
it's preaching understanding between these two religions.
That's what it's about. It's about making the point that they should
live together in harmony, because they have so much in common.
Wonderful. Now, the entrance to this minaret is below my feet,
buried by centuries of mud washed here by the river.
There is, though, a little door, a little hole knocked up there.
That's the way in. Let's see if I can get up this rather ramshackle ladder.
I hope I fit. Most shaming if I don't.
Okay, well, first thing, up the ladder.
So far so good.
Okay, here we are. Gosh, it is a tight fit.
A very tight fit.
But I am now at last inside
the mighty Minaret of Jam.
Incredible. Here we see the staircase.
Amazing, beautifully detailed.
Beautiful brickwork. Well, first of all, I'll go down,
down to see what's to be discovered. The stairs are made of brick.
They're damaged, rather treacherous. Be careful here.
And now the stairs in fact stop.
Ooh!
People will not excavate below here, for good reason.
If you excavate this earth,
then it weakens the foundations of the building,
which are already pretty precarious, so no work has been done.
What's below my feet for the moment remains a mystery.
Some climb. Oops. I've reached the level of the first platform,
so just over halfway up the minaret,
and here the stairs get very perilous indeed.
Well, this is fascinating, 'cause in fact, I observe
that there are two spiral staircases coming up, one wrapped inside the other.
Um, a sort of double helix.
This one I've come up, another one going down here.
Incredible! Very complex. Very strong, I suppose.
And here, a shallow vault, again, beautifully built.
Minarets are, of course, practical things. They are platforms
from which the faithful are called to prayer.
They are, of course, also fingers to heaven.
They raise humanity up towards the gods,
and they declare a site sacred.
Sadly, the staircase is too precarious to continue.
The tower leans dramatically as the river undermines its foundations.
The Afghan police have given us very good protection,
for which we're very grateful. Now something of a problem's emerged.
They're insisting we leave immediately, for reasons of security,
to wrongfoot the enemy, who might be waiting on the road back.
We haven't really finished filming here.
It's incredibly frustrating, but we've got to go.
The Minaret of Jam is emblematic of the many historic buildings and sites
around the world threatened by conflict and looting.
This building has survived so much.
For it to be lost now would be a disaster.