DAN CRUICKSHANK: This is a journey to explore the architecture of power,
power of a despot over his people,
of man over nature,
the power to enslave,
and as a weapon that can control a whole land
and its destiny.
This is the capital of Romania. Bucharest.
A city that once straddled the cultural divide
between Eastern and Western Europe
was known as the Paris of the Balkans.
But in the 1980s, Bucharest was transformed
to reflect the brutal power of the country's leader,
Nicolae Ceausescu, Europe's last Communist dictator.
This is the Palace of the People,
one of the most outrageous monuments to despotic rule
the world has ever seen.
The Palace was to be both Ceausescu's personal residence
and home to all aspects of government,
the building that would secure his iron grip on power.
The Boulevard of Socialist Victory is just over 3 kilometres long
and was cut through the city's fabric during the late 1980s.
At one end is the People's Palace.
This road was, of course, inspired by the Champs Élysées in Paris.
And like all long, straight routes,
it is a timeless symbol of power,
of order, of a godlike determination to control nature
and the affairs of man.
From here, the building's at its most ominous, most threatening.
The windows, like hundreds of eyes,
observing and controlling.
This is the epitome of Big Brother architecture.
Golly, this interior is a power personified,
power achieved through intimidating scale that dwarfs,
and by the use of ruthless, repetitive classical architecture.
Classicism, that sort of impersonal and funereal white marble.
The Palace contains over 1,000 rooms,
a never-ending parade of extravagance.
In floor area, it's the largest building in the world
after the Pentagon in Washington.
No expense was spared.
There's estimated to be over 1 million tons of marble
and over 3,500 tons of crystal
used to decorate the lavish interiors.
Seven hundred architects and 20,000 workers toiled in shifts,
24 hours a day.
The overall cost is said to have exceeded £2 billion.
Ceausescu wanted his palace to be a triumph for Romania.
Everything from the chandeliers to the carvings had to be made in the country.
This is the room in which Ceausescu
would have signed documents of state.
It's huge. It's absurd.
The climax of the building,
the size and grandeur of this room,
was designed to make visitors feel small and insignificant
before the master statesman.
If you were left with any doubt that you were in the grips of a man with power,
then you just had to have a look from this balcony.
It's like a kick in the guts.
From here you can see the scale of Ceausescu's monstrous ambition.
It's been estimated that he destroyed one-fifth of central Bucharest
to create a ceremonial route to his palace.
Thirteen churches and over 9,000 homes were torn down,
displacing at least 40,000 people.
This was the most vicious attack on architecture and history in Europe
since the Second World War.
Even though the Romanian population
would suffer power cuts and food shortages,
Ceausescu was determined his palace would be unrivalled.
He held a competition.
A young and ambitious architect was chosen to do his bidding.
(IN ROMANIAN)
Many people may find this building oppressive
because they lost their homes, their livelihood for its construction.
What do you say to those people?
This vast, formal room was intended for state receptions.
It was called the ballroom.
I can't imagine they would have been very warm, these receptions.
It's a very chilling interior,
which was dominated by gigantic portraits
of Ceausescu at one end, his wife, Elena, at the other.
And we have now these large, empty, marble panels.
The paintings were never to be installed.
Ceausescu never saw his palace completed.
In December 1989, to his utter bewilderment,
the people, at last, rebelled against his rule.
Three days later, on Christmas day,
Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were executed
by firing squad.
But his death left the Romanian people with a dilemma.
What should they do with the vast monument
that symbolised Ceausescu's reign?
What happened next was extraordinary.
Ceausescu's palace was transformed into the home of Romanian democracy.
This grandiose room is the senate.
It was designed as a great hall in which Ceausescu would receive heads of state.
This building is rich in irony.
What was to be the domain of a despot
has become the symbol of a new democratic Romania.
What was Ceausescu's palace
has now become the Palace of Parliament.
The Romanian parliament began to move into this building in 1994,
just five years after the death of the dictator.
The people are obliged, for practical and economic reasons,
to use the building as a monument to their oppression.
This long, straight boulevard,
combined with this domineering palace,
is the ultimate expression of an architectural dream
that's haunted the imagination of despots
for thousands of years.
This is power personified.
And I must say, this is the gloomiest expression of that dream I've ever seen.
So what's going to happen now?
The people of this city are learning to live with this building,
but will they ever learn to love it?
(MUEZZIN CHANTING)
On the shores of the eastern Mediterranean
lies a land sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims.
The Holy Land.
(SPEAKING IN ARABIC)
(THANKING IN ARABIC)
Off the Mediterranean coast of Syria
stands one of the most historically important
and architecturally powerful castles ever built.
For over 100 years it stood defiantly at the meeting point of two worlds,
the Muslim and the Christian.
And in the end, it alone kept Christian hopes alive
in the Holy Land.
In the 12th century, Marqab was one of the largest castles
controlled by the Crusader knights,
part of a mighty European army that fought to reclaim the Holy Land
for the Christian faith.
But in 1188, Saladin, the most successful Muslim commander,
had just defeated the Crusader army,
and one of the last great bastions that stood between him
and control of the Holy Land was Marqab.
Saladin must have stood just about here.
This location to the southeast of the castle
is the best place to view its defensive works.
A contemporary chronicle says he thought the place impregnable
and impossible to take.
It's very large, and it's also set in a naturally strong position,
the plateau top fortified with a series of walls
and mighty round towers.
The physical power of the castle
allowed it to command a huge area of land,
extracting tribute from its neighbours for almost a century.
For Saladin, it was both a military and an economic prize.
Saladin would also have noted
that the castle's made of hard, volcanic basalt.
A very tough material.
And he recognised that the castle is a fine pioneering example
of the science of military design.
I'll show you what I mean.
The basic plan of the castle is dictated by nature.
The rocky plateau on which it sits is triangular in shape,
so a perimeter wall
is built round the edge of the triangular plateau.
Then within that, a higher wall is constructed
that overlooks the outer one.
Also, the castle divides in two by a great wall here.
This is the castle town. Up to 1,000 people lived there in 1200.
This is the citadel.
And, here, the great donjon or keep.
To take the castle, you had to take that.
I'm in the space between the perimeter walls.
If I were an attacker, I'd be suffering terribly
because the defenders up there on the higher wall
would be showering missiles onto me.
Now, here is the gate to the citadel.
I'd have to break my way through this. That would be quite difficult, I'm sure.
Massive defence.
And then I'd penetrate up
and, golly, I'm baffled.
There are several exits left to right. What am I to do?
This is like entering a labyrinth.
The plan of the citadel is complicated, confusing,
all calculated to confound any attacker.
Where would one go? There's these narrow alleys.
Arches leading left, right, up and down.
This is a fantastic machine of war, this castle,
everything designed to help the defender,
give him security in a hostile land.
For example, here, there are four or five, sort of, different, sort of,
ways to go.
An arch, there. Stairs plunging into the bowels.
Another arch, here. This divides again.
Where on earth would your attacker go? Well, I'll try this direction.
This is the great hall, the convivial heart of the castle
where the garrison would have dined.
But even this is essentially a bit of ruthless,
functional military architecture,
part of the fighting capability of the castle.
It's vaulted with stone, very strong.
That's to protect it from missiles being hurled in
by enemy catapults outside.
Also, this provides a very strong platform
on which the castle's catapults could be mounted to fling stones back.
This castle wasn't just a fortress, it was also a monastery,
because the Crusader knights who held this castle
were also a military order of monks
who'd come to the Holy Land to look after pilgrims.
This stupendous building was built in about 1190
as a chapel.
A fantastic piece of early Gothic architecture.
This is an amazing world,
a world where holy men were fighting for the Holy Land.
The military order was the Knights Hospitallers.
Its members took monastic vows of poverty, chastity, obedience.
And in this little side chapel is something very amazing,
a fresco that dates from 1190.
It shows Christ with the 12 disciples.
And what's incredible, only the faces survive.
And these are not the faces of men only of prayer,
these are the faces of warriors.
Surely these are portraits of the Hospitallers here at the time
this fresco was painted.
It's very moving.
These are the faces of men that made this castle great,
that rebuilt it and enlarged it,
that made it one of the greatest castles in the Holy Land.
Massive defences could not ultimately save the castle.
Even this mighty keep,
with walls up to 5 metres thick,
could not resist.
When the end came, it came from below
and these great works are undermined,
and so would tumble.
A Muslim force arrived in 1285
and tunnelled beneath the huge keep,
fatally weakening the castle's defences.
Downhearted, with no hope of relief,
the Crusader knights surrendered after a siege that had lasted just five weeks.
The loss of Marqab marked the end of the Crusader adventure.
The dream of a Christian state in the Holy Land was over.
This castle has a grim and brooding presence in the landscape.
It's a dark place, really.
An appropriate monument to a particularly bloody epoch
of human history, the Crusades.
The struggle between East and West, between Islam and Christianity,
a struggle which started with the bloody taking
by the Christians of Jerusalem in 1099.
An event that shocked the Muslim world.
Shocks it still, really.
An act of barbarity undertaken by a religion dedicated to love.
And this castle played a key role in the Crusades,
so, standing here, one cannot help but think about the legacy of that struggle.
The fact that it still goes on, in a way.
There's still religious wars.
There's still bloodshed.
There's still pain and suffering in this region.
And this castle, in a way,
and its history, marks the beginning of that tragedy.
(JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING)
New Orleans, Louisiana, in the American South.
This is a land with a troubled past.
The Mississippi River made the city rich.
But it wasn't just crops that were traded along its length.
Human beings were once sold down the river to work as slaves.
The city's moved on since then,
but Hurricane Katrina of 2005 and the massive floods that followed
reopened old wounds.
# Some bright morning when this life is over
# I'll fly, fly away
# When I die Hallelujah by and by
# I'll fly away #
Wonderful. I'll Fly Away. I love it.
Fly, far off, far away. It's really good.
And what do you reckon the legacy of slavery is?
I think slavery is still going on.
Contemporary slavery.
The hurricane hit us, it took about four, five days
for anyone to come down here to see what happened.
My people were stuck on a roof for three days.
You don't have to have shackles on my feet and have me chained up
for me to be a slave, you know what I'm saying?
Slavery, to me, is a mental thing right now.
Contemporary, you know what I'm saying?
It's all contemporary.
(TROMBONE HONKING)
Out of the city, hugging the banks of the Mississippi,
snakes Louisiana's River Road.
It's hard to believe now that for much of the 19th century,
this was the country's wealthiest highway,
the home of millionaires.
And the relationship between these masters
and the slaves they owned
is written into the very architecture of the region.
This is Evergreen,
a sugarcane plantation where once 200 people lived and worked.
But the hard labour went on behind the scenes.
Evergreen's public face was this grand family mansion,
dramatically remodelled in the 1830s by its owner,
Michel Pierre Becnel.
Becnel was an ambitious man.
He saw himself as more than just a farmer,
he was a gentleman.
And his social and cultural aspirations
are reflected in the architecture he commissioned.
He did everything he could to magnify the importance of his house,
and by doing that, to magnify the importance of his family.
The secret of the success here are these giant columns.
They really put this house in the major league.
They make it look like a really grand mansion.
Also, they proffer a rather clever visual trick.
They make what is quite a small house look vast.
Becnel spent so much on Evergreen that he went bankrupt.
But he got the grandeur he so much desired.
The details of the house are Greek Revival,
a style that was internationally fashionable in the early 19th century.
And here, in front of me, is a wonderful example.
This doorcase is very sophisticated.
In the United States, Greek Revival architecture
had a particular meaning and importance.
It almost represented the national identity.
It represented civilisation, liberty and freedom.
But in the South it was favoured for perhaps less noble reasons,
because Greece had been an ancient democracy,
but a democracy that supported slavery.
Gosh, the interior is very opulent.
And the Greek Revival theme is continued.
Ionic capitals here, Greek Revival fire surround.
And this is the main entertaining room of the house.
Here, the family would have gathered.
And, here, it would have held parties.
This door is the clue. A wide door with an overleaf.
That's to allow ladies in their great crinoline dresses
to pass through with ease, circulating around the interior.
At the back of the mansion, everything's ordered, neat, symmetrical.
The outbuildings look like chess pieces on a green board.
Even the outdoor privy, temple-like in appearance,
is an essay in classical geometry.
It's all designed to send out a message
about man's control over nature,
but also speaks of man's control over other men.
Behind the mansion lies a different world.
This is where Evergreen's field slaves lived,
in cabins separated from the world of the master,
but laid out with the same symmetrical rigour.
The slave quarters here now look charmingly picturesque.
The cabins are in a romantic state of decay
and they're sheltered by enchanting shadows
cast by this avenue of wonderful oak trees.
But things would have been very different when slaves lived here.
The oaks wouldn't have been here.
This was a grim, industrial road
with uniform and utilitarian cabins set on each side.
At one end was a mill, and at the other, the River Road and the Mississippi.
Feeding the sugar mill was harsh work.
At harvest time, the slaves laboured 16 hours a day, seven days a week,
to reap the tall, tough crop.
Here's a copy of the inventory drawn up when Becnel went bankrupt.
It's in French, then the legal language of Louisiana.
And, of course, it lists his slaves.
And here we have them. Each one is numbered, named
and his sort of profession, trade described.
For example, Number 2,
is Rançon, aged 37,
described as commander, capable of directing works on the plantation.
So he's an overseer.
Then there's Phill, aged 34.
He's a sugar worker.
And described here as a Negro of confidence.
That means he would be trusted to go down the river by himself
to New Orleans, delivering goods, I guess. Something like that.
And, of course, these slaves are listed in the inventory
because they're merely assets.
Each one has a price tag next to his name in dollars.
In the end, these human beings were only property.
These slaves were thrown together with relatives and strangers,
sometimes as many as 16 to a cabin.
Gosh, pretty compact accommodation.
But in fact, what you're seeing is two houses.
There would have been a partition down here. I can see the mark on the floor.
It's a very minimal construction. Just timber posts with boarding outside.
Perhaps there would have been some insulation in between,
but, nevertheless, I guess it would have been pretty cold in winter.
Hot in summer.
Imagine the life in here.
Crowded.
The smells. Some cooking there.
Also, I guess, a little kitchen somewhere outside,
along with a privy.
Life must have been very intense.
So, Kathe, what's it feel like to be here?
(SIGHS)
I find that when I bring groups here,
you'll oftentimes find
one or two people who just journey off on their own.
And you may find them standing on a porch or beside a tree,
and they're crying.
Just sometimes very emotionally crying.
You can almost hear the children.
I can see people sometimes standing on a porch.
I can see people coming down this lane,
in from the fields in the evening,
very, very tired.
And if you're just quiet and just listen,
you can hear it and feel it,
the spirit of my ancestors all around this place.
It's incredibly moving and important
that the grand mansion house and the humble slave quarters
survive on the same plantation.
This beautiful architecture is not tainted by slavery,
but is part of the same narrative.
The slave quarters, here, are, I suppose, to some,
an embarrassing survival.
But that's a good thing. Forgetfulness is a great enemy.
While slave quarters like that survive,
people are reminded of the evil that comes when man has power over man.
The evil of exploitation.
The evil of domination.
And while that memory survives, those evils,
one hopes, can be eradicated.
Istanbul, the ancient home of the Ottoman Sultans.
This was the capital of their mighty empire,
from the 15th century,
and the place where their dynasty thrived for over 400 years.
I've come to Istanbul to explore an institution
in the former Ottoman court
that for centuries has been reviled and misunderstood
by people in the West.
It was a place, it is said, in which men had absolute power over women.
It's the harem of the Sultans.
The harem was a labyrinth of nearly 400 rooms,
many of which have still never been seen by the public.
This is the architecture of a hidden and secret world
that is still largely written out of Turkish history.
I've now entered the harem.
This gate was guarded by black eunuchs.
They would be sitting in this room, on these benches,
stopping people like me from proceeding beyond this point.
The life story of the eunuchs is peculiar, indeed.
They were slaves, mostly purchased as boys in North Africa and Egypt
and then castrated en route back to Istanbul.
Brutal, indeed.
And these eunuchs lived in the rooms here.
They guarded the Sultan's harem of beautiful women.
Imagine the atmosphere, the veiled fury,
the frustration.
The harem was enlarged by Sultan Murad III
in the late 16th century.
Estimates vary, but it's thought that between 400 and 1,000 women
were living within these walls during his reign.
Most of the girls were slaves purchased at slave markets,
captured in war or simply presented as gifts.
And since Islamic law forbade the enslavement of Muslims,
virtually all the girls here had been born Christians or were Jewish.
And this is where the new arrivals lived.
The girls were virgins when they arrived here,
generally not more than 12 years old,
and immediately converted to Islam.
And then harem-trained.
Taught useful skills, music, embroidery, Turkish.
And they slept in dormitories up here,
overseen at night by an elderly lady
to ensure there would be no sapphic activity.
Sex was strictly controlled in the harem.
A rigid hierarchy was in place.
Only the most accomplished and beautiful girls
would be chosen to spend the night with the Sultan.
And these favourites would often be picked by the Sultan's own mother.
When chosen, a girl's life would be transformed.
After Murad had slept with a girl,
her status increased literally overnight.
After all, she could be carrying a child that would be the next Sultan.
The girl was moved here into the favourites' courtyard,
given her own apartment and staff, her own eunuch.
I suppose most girls in the harem
wanted to be selected as favourites,
were furious if not chosen and were jealous of those who were.
Murad is said to have fathered nearly 50 children.
All the males were instantly considered potential heirs to the throne.
This fostered a savagely competitive atmosphere amongst the mothers,
as they promoted the interests of their own children.
The harem was a hotbed of intrigue.
Only the cunning and manipulative could succeed here,
could rise to the top.
Women would spy on women, women would spy on the council of state,
if they could, on the Sultan himself
through that window over there, that grill.
This is the council hall.
Eunuchs would be bribed.
In this world, there were no boundaries,
this world of subtle intrigue,
anything was possible.
Murders were undertaken.
Even the Sultan himself could be toppled.
When the Sultan died or was deposed,
it was a terrifying moment for the inhabitants of the harem.
Favourites were replaced,
and the battle for the succession began amongst the sons.
Murad, when he became the Sultan,
had all his brothers executed
so that none of them could challenge his possession of the throne.
This bloody solution was typical of Ottoman rulers
in the 16th century.
In the 17th century, this rather extreme approach
of solving the tricky problems of succession
was gradually rejected,
and the Sultans preferred to keep their brothers in protective custody.
And these rooms are where these chaps whiled away their time.
Gorgeous interior. It's very much gilded cages
within the heart of the harem.
The woman whose son survived
family struggles and fratricide to become Sultan
would herself become the most powerful woman in the harem.
Indeed, one of the most powerful women in the Muslim world.
She became the Valide Sultan.
The Queen Mother.
And this is her apartment.
An amazing place.
You can feel here the privilege, the prestige, that went with her position.
This apartment is an amazing place.
This is set at the very heart of the harem.
From here she could see and control everything.
Golly, this is the private part of the apartment.
This is where the Queen Mother would sleep.
The bed over there.
And here is her prayer room.
And on the wall, well, is Mecca.
Golly. And she, of course, would pray here, facing Mecca.
The Queen Mother and her son, the Sultan,
ruled the empire from this harem.
It's ironic that the sons born here
could become heads of the greatest Islamic dynasty on Earth,
and yet their mothers had almost invariably been slaves
and had been born non-Muslims.
Power was achieved and maintained at tremendous human cost.
It's true that slaves within the harem were educated,
and they could rise to a high position of power in the land.
But we have to remember that within its walls,
girls were enslaved and trained
to be put at the disposal of one man.
And those girls were guarded by male slaves
who had been castrated.
And also, within the harem,
was a tradition of brother murdering brother.
So, although the harem is a fascinating and efficient machine of the state,
it was surely, in the end, a deadly and terrifying place.