DAN CRUICKSHANK: I'm on a journey
to see how people find pleasure in architecture.
In the middle of the rainforest, an opera house.
In a bustling Indian city,
an elegant hotel with the taste of the Raj.
A country villa where pleasure was mathematically constructed.
And a magical vision of a fairytale castle.
The Taj in Mumbai is one of the world's great hotels
and has long been a symbol of its city.
It's about the first major building you see when arriving by ship.
And its dome has long been a navigation beacon.
When completed in 1903, the hotel was the last word in luxury living in India.
The streets of Mumbai teem with life.
Few places on Earth are as frantic and noisy.
Oh, peace! I'm already feeling cocooned.
I'm checking in to discover how a grand hotel,
how a palace of pleasure actually works.
I should say now I like my old hotels to feel old, to be old-fashioned.
I do hope I'm not gonna be let down.
-Hello. -Hello.
Good evening. I have a reservation here.
-Please have a seat. -Oh, yes.
Could I please request for your last name?
-Cruickshank. -Sure, Mr Cruickshank.
From its earliest days, at the dawn of the 20th century,
this is a building that's elevated its guests to the status of royalty.
The staircase is the hotel's great architectural glory
and in many ways encapsulates the aspirations of the place.
The hotel was designed originally by a Hindu architect called Kundaro,
but he died and it was completed by a British chap called Chambers.
And it's Chambers, of course, who now tends to get the credit for all of this.
It is, however, a wonderful fusion,
a fusion of European Gothic with Indian Mogul details.
A wonderful piece of work. And I must say, standing here now,
I can imagine the ladies in their full evening dress,
sweeping down the staircase on their way to dinner.
The Taj is home to one of Mumbai's earliest licensed bars,
opened in the 1930s.
-Can I have vodka martini, please? -Sure, sir. How would you like it...
-Just with a twist, just a twist, yes. -Sure.
That looks very good.
-Oh, that is delicious. -Thank you, sir.
You've made a few of these in your time, obviously.
I couldn't lie. If that wasn't good,
I couldn't say it was good, but it is very good.
-Thank you so much. -No, thank you very much.
Golly, that's amazing.
In my last 25 years, I must have made a thousand of these.
You've practised!
The Taj can accommodate over 1,000 guests.
And they're all fed by this one busy kitchen.
One more cold milk for cereal.
Put it there.
Ah.
-Good morning, sir. -Good morning.
-Breakfast. Lovely. -Yeah.
Oh, lovely fruit, thank you so much, and coffee.
-There you go, sir. -Lovely.
Well, of course, all grand hotels are a place for fantasy,
palaces of pleasure, great escapism.
One can, when one can afford it,
imagine oneself a prince waited on hand and foot.
To achieve this luxury takes an army of workers.
One for every guest.
But many of them exist in a parallel world,
virtually unseen by visitors.
I've just entered the bowels of the hotel.
This is a place where tourists do not penetrate.
I've come down here to see how the hotel operates.
A somewhat upstairs-downstairs world.
There's up there, all fancy and ornament,
and down here, all functional.
The hotel was the idea of Jamshetji Tata,
an industrialist with a great love for his city.
I'm about to come face to face with the man himself.
-Hello, hi. -Hello.
Now I'd heard of this shrine in the subterranean part of the building,
it's in the control room in fact.
And here, there's a portrait of Jamshetji Tata,
the blessed founder of the hotel. And everyday I'm told
the staff put this floral garland in front of the portrait.
During the Raj, the British dominated the social scene in Mumbai.
And Indians were barred from many of the finest clubs and hotels.
Jamshetji Tata was determined to construct a place
where Indians and Europeans could meet on equal terms.
The hotel had a peculiar start.
An astrologist recommended it open on a particular day in 1903
and the opening went ahead, despite the fact that
the dome above the staircase wasn't completed,
only two floors of rooms were ready for occupation
and there was no electricity, which meant the lifts didn't work.
Despite its clumsy opening, the Taj had towering ambitions.
For me, the glory of the Taj
is the way it marries the ornamental with the functional.
The central dome's not only a great ornamental landmark,
but it helps the hotel to function, helps it to breathe.
The dome and the well of the staircase are like a great chimney.
They ventilate the building.
Hot air rises and exits through these windows,
and I tell you, it's very hot up here now.
And as the hot air exits, it sucks in refrigerated air
from down below.
A very, very sensible piece of natural ventilation.
The hotel's an ingenious structure in which modern services
were very cunningly integrated with the architecture
and in which new pioneering technology was used most creatively
to form a building that was both comfortable and very solid.
I love these corner domes, very ornamental, but in fact,
they're there to contain water tanks. That was a very brilliant idea.
It got round the water shortages in the city in the early 20th century
and made sure that every bathroom in the hotel had water all the time.
The Taj has modernised over the years,
but it's still visited by Mumbai's traditional grandees.
-Is that okay? -Yeah, thank you very much. Excellent.
When did you first come to the Taj Hotel?
I think I was about 16 when I first, somebody brought me,
I used to live outside Bombay and somebody brought me
to see this beautiful place.
And I was absolutely bedazzled.
A Saturday night here was a very, very grand affair.
And sometimes on dress nights,
the young men would be in their mess jackets
and cummerbunds, and looking very elegant.
I also imagine the Taj played an important role, a sort of,
almost in the politics of India.
A lot of people would come here, the maharajah would come here,
they could be maybe more liberated here.
Of course. It was especially during the racing season
because a lot of them had their studs and their stables.
And they would race their horses, and after the races,
they would come here for dinner, especially on a Saturday night.
The maharajahs lived here, they had suites here,
where they would come regularly so many months of the year.
Today it's another big hotel.
For us, with our links with the Taj, it will always be a second home.
The grand hotel survives as a palace of pleasure,
but it's no longer quite what it was. It's been re-invented.
It's no longer the preserve of the princes and the aristocracy,
the rich, the powerful and the famous are now dominated by
well-heeled, demanding, globetrotting tourists.
So they are rather international in feel.
But it's still a place of pleasure.
Bavaria, southern Germany.
People are celebrating the coming of spring.
In the 19th century,
this was the playground of the Bavarian royal family.
I'll have one of those. Oh. Danke.
And here, one monarch indulged his wildest passions,
creating an extravagant and intoxicating building.
-So, skol. Cheers, skol. -Cheers.
Cheers.
This is Schwangau, Bavaria, home to a fairytale vision,
created by a man who wanted to turn his dreams into architecture.
He wanted to build to escape the modern world.
He wanted to build to escape humanity.
His name was Ludwig II, the Dream King.
(HORSES TROTTING)
As a child, Ludwig loved the countryside, especially around here.
It was a perfect theatre for his lively romantic imagination.
He created a fancy world based on Bavarian folk tales, tales of chivalry.
And, of course, such tales demanded a castle for him to inhabit.
I understand that, as a child, I fantasised about a castle,
a place of safety, security, cosy,
a castle with a great tower which I could draw.
But for me, that remained a fantasy. However, for Ludwig it became a reality.
This is the Schloss Neuschwanstein.
The castle's only 150 years old,
but it's a vision of medieval romance.
I've long been intrigued to see this place.
This is not just architecture,
entering here is like entering the mind, the body, the soul of a man.
The castle reflects Ludwig's dreams of being an all-powerful ruler.
Ludwig looked back into history,
recreating a time when kings were answerable to no one except God.
This is the Throne Room, a model of Ludwig's universe,
a temple to pure, just and absolute monarchy.
It's inspired by a Byzantine Christian church
and proclaims kingship by Christian virtues.
Up there you have the six canonised kings
standing below an image of Christ in judgement.
And above me,
the starry firmament, the sun, under which the king rules.
And here below me, an image of the Earth,
the cycle, the wheel of life.
We have plants and animals. All this, of course, creates the ideal world
that Ludwig thought he would rule in an ideal manner.
But all of this is a fancy, a dream.
Ludwig didn't have the power of an absolute monarch.
He couldn't decree laws
and he was wracked by insecurity about himself as a man.
He felt inadequate, humiliated, guilty about his homosexuality.
To create this fairytale castle, Ludwig embraced modern engineering.
Neuschwanstein has more in common with a New York skyscraper
than a medieval castle.
Ludwig liked the look of the past, but he wanted to utilise
the technology of the present.
So the walls are made of brick, just clad with a veneer of stone.
And here, the major structure is made out of steel.
Steel girders, steel beams. Astonishing.
At the heart of the castle sits the Singers' Hall.
Inspired by the operas of Richard Wagner,
here Ludwig could lose himself in heroic music and legends.
And to bring the music to life,
Ludwig sought solitude in the most mysterious of places.
Golly.
This must be the most extraordinary room in this extraordinary castle.
Here, as upper level, the king created a subterranean grotto.
It's inspired by the grotto in the Tannhäuser saga,
the grotto which Tannhäuser worshipped and met Venus, the goddess of love.
And here's the king's bedroom.
It's in a delicate high Gothic style, rather like a shrine.
An exalted sacred space, a marvellous monastic cell.
And here is his bed, an incredible affair,
with a top portion rather like a medieval tomb.
Above the bed is an image of love, with her bow and arrow
aimed directly at the king's heart.
The whole theme of the bedroom is love,
or rather the trials and tribulations and complications of earthly love.
On the walls there are a series of paintings,
showing the story of Tristan and Isolde set in the court of King Arthur.
Theirs was an adulterous love brought on by sorcery that ended in tragic death.
But why should the king surround himself in his bedroom with this story?
Surely this story of illicit doomed love spoke to Ludwig
because his homosexuality filled him with remorse.
For him, earthly love was a matter of guilt.
Like Tristan and Isolde, death offered the only salvation.
Neuschwanstein is Ludwig's greatest achievement.
Here he could enjoy perfect isolation, liberation really.
From this tower he could survey the landscape
that had inspired his romantic imagination since childhood.
But this peace was not to last.
Ludwig's extravagance attracted powerful enemies in the Bavarian court.
In 1886, at the age of 40,
Ludwig was declared insane and unfit to rule.
He was dragged from his bed in Neuschwanstein,
exiled from his fairytale castle.
One day later, Ludwig and his doctor were found dead.
Their bodies were found here.
The site now marked by this cross
that seems to be rising rather eerily from the water.
Was it suicide? Was Ludwig heartbroken,
seeking salvation, escape through death?
Or was it murder?
The whole business remains intensely mysterious.
But one thing is certain, the king's death
was very convenient for those in Bavaria who thought his reign bizarre.
Within weeks of Ludwig's death,
his castle was opened to the public to recoup its expense.
Ludwig's eccentric vision would repay its cost many times over.
And now Neuschwanstein brings pleasure to the world.
Ludwig made our dream of a magic castle real.
I'm travelling on the Amazon
in search of an opera house in the middle of the rainforest.
It was built with money from the Brazilian rubber trade.
So I'm going to see where the story begins.
(SPEAKING BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE)
Excellent. Mauricio.
Okay.
Mauricio's family have been rubber tappers for three generations
and he's going to show me how it's done.
Mauricio's found his tree and I see it's a young tree.
It hasn't been cut yet, so I suppose therefore... Oh, he's cutting it now.
I suppose it's richer latex. Now here we go, diagonal cut, so it's...
By gravity, the sap of the tree, the latex, will seep out and run down.
Oh, two cut. Oh, look, my goodness me! It's coming out already, straightaway.
A tree full of life. Here it comes.
In the late 19th century, this sap transformed the Amazon.
A boom in demand made fortunes
for the rubber barons who controlled the industry.
Look, there you are, elastic. Brilliant. Ah, there it goes.
That is a wonderful example of...
It works, my God. Yes, and into there.
There you are, so it's congealed this, into a rubber band...
I say, I need a rubber band. That's rather handy.
But for the workforce, life was grim.
They were kept poor, trapped into debt and treated brutally.
I'm keen to know what Mauricio makes of the opera house,
paid for with their toil.
Have you ever been inside it?
My journey takes me to the point where the Amazon
is joined by two mighty rivers.
I'm at the meeting of the waters, where the Rio Negro, on my right,
meets the Rio Solimoes, flowing in here from my left.
The amazing thing is these rivers have different coloured waters,
as you can see.
Rio Negro, the waters are inky black. And the Rio Solimoes, a light yellow.
And just upstream of this extraordinary crossroads
is the great inland port, Manaus.
The rubber boom transformed Manaus from a shabby backwater...
Ugh!
...into a heaving centre of commerce, and with this wealth,
the people created a building to embody their cultural aspirations.
This is the Teatro Amazonas.
Completed in 1896, it's a piece of Paris in the heart of Brazil.
After my journey up river, I approach the building with some trepidation.
But my goodness, it is rather wonderful.
The approach is very dramatic, sweeping staircase up to this terrace,
and in front of me looms this powerful portico.
Corinthian colonnade, a great semi-circular pediment above.
(WOMAN SINGING)
The auditorium is sensational.
It's so special, very fragile, very, very wonderful.
I love these tiers of galleries with their iron fronts.
It's all to do with the pleasure of the arts.
And also has much to do with veneration, in a way,
of that great city of pleasures, Paris, because standing here looking up,
the ceiling is a wonderful conceived...
The idea is one's standing below the Eiffel Tower looking up.
There are the four legs of the tower,
of course, which was a sort of new wonder of the age
when this theatre was being designed.
And the four legs frame four paintings showing the arts.
Dance over there, frolicking maidens.
Music.
Tragedy. And above the proscenium,
the great epitome of all the arts, opera.
Can you imagine sitting in this box in 1900,
listening to an opera or watching a ballet down there?
It was escapism of the highest order.
Outside was raw elemental nature,
the great rainforest, the mighty Amazon, a teeming and dangerous port and market.
But in here, well, a world of fashion and elegance.
Really the opera house was a refuge from reality.
Eliane Matarano is a soloist at the Teatro Amazonas.
She grew up in a wooden shack in a poor part of town.
Her life changed when she heard a performance on this square
in front of the opera house.
When the opera house was built, it was for the elite of Manaus.
I mean, have times changed?
Do you think the opera, classical music, now brings people together,
makes all people feel as one?
Tonight, Eliane's going to perform on stage,
realising her dream of bringing opera to the people.
This opera house may have been built
on the pain and suffering of the rubber tappers.
But now, it entrances the people of Manaus, a joyous place,
where talent and genius are centre stage.
I'm driving through northern Italy
on the trail of one of the greatest architects of the Western world,
Andrea Palladio.
Palladio was born 500 years ago,
yet his architecture continues to inspire, astonish, to delight.
He believed that he possessed the key to beauty
and he used it to create buildings that are the ultimate in visual pleasure.
I'm on my way to see one of his most exquisite pieces of work
to try and discover its secrets.
One of his finest creations was built in the 1550s,
the Villa Barbaro.
Gosh, this villa has immense architectural presence,
sitting on this high bit of land in front of me,
commanding all before it.
The first thing that strikes one is a rigid symmetry,
suggesting order, balance, harmony.
The central section of the villa is topped with a triangular pediment,
supported on giant columns. It's a temple front.
It's meant to invoke the gravity, the dignity of the golden age of Rome.
The focus of the villa is this mighty cube,
which defines the whole design.
Every detail of the wings and pavilions is proportionate to this cube.
The result is harmony and timeless beauty,
commissioned by the Barbaro brothers of Venice.
This magnificent front
suggests the location of the main rooms of the villa,
or at least the largest rooms, but rather surprisingly,
it doesn't contain the main door. That's somewhere else.
Guests would have entered the villa by walking along this arcade.
It's very impressive, rather formal for the countryside, indeed quite urban.
I feel like I'm entering a public building.
This is sensational.
This part in front of me, this was the public world
where the Barbaro brothers entertained in great style, great state.
It does look rather like
a sort of great basilica, a great church, a great hall. Fantastic.
The walls are decorated by Paolo Veronese
in a trompe l'oeil 3-D effect.
Painted figures and architectural details
enhance the proportions and sense of space.
And here one has evidence that there was a door right here,
built into the fabric of the structure.
There's a recess for the door and here's a hinge.
This door separated the public world here
from the very private world here.
This modest saloon is shaped like a cube,
but it's trompe l'oeil ceiling makes it appear monumental.
The rooms on each side of this cubical hall
show in a very direct way how Palladio would relate
different parts of the building in a most harmonious manner.
This room is double square in plan, a double cube,
it's twice as long as it is wide,
and a double square was one of Palladio's ideal, divine proportions.
The proportions of the villa are like musical notes,
so the whole building resonates like a carefully composed piece of music.
All of this, the precise proportions,
the carefully considered relationships between the different parts
was intended to give an intense sense of pleasure.
As well as proportions, Palladio embraced symmetry,
doorways mirror doorways, in perfect alignment.
The dining room is quite simply a Palladian jewel box.
One's drawn out of the private part of the villa
by this fantastic exuberant confection.
It's called a nymphaeum
and it's decorated with images from classical mythology.
It's as if the Barbaros were inviting the gods
to join them in their pleasure ground.
But Palladio's architecture wasn't just for the private palaces of the rich.
In the nearby city of Vicenza,
Palladio created masterpieces for the public to enjoy.
(PEOPLE CHEERING)
And it's home to what is, for me, an architectural bible.
In front of me is the first edition of Palladio's Quattro libri,
the Four Books of Architecture, published in 1570.
So, well over 400 years old.
Published, of course, during his lifetime.
This is an amazing document to handle.
It's one of the most inspirational
and profoundly influential architecture books ever published.
Through the centuries, people have tried to understand
how Palladio's buildings achieved such beauty.
But what is the secret of his architecture?
Clearly it's to do with the use of particular proportions,
which he believed were divine in origin,
used in very precise relationships.
But will these proportions and relationships
always lead to beauty, to pleasure in architecture?
Well, of course, pleasure is a very personal matter.
What one can say, though, with certainty,
is that Palladio's architecture has given pleasure
to many people for over 400 years.
It's certainly stood the test of time.
I personally find it incredibly stimulating.