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00:00:00I'm embarking on the second leg of my world tour of 80 of the greatest treasures ever created by
00:00:10man. I'm about to travel through 2,000 years of history, from the ancient civilizations of
00:00:17Mexico to the promised land of the United States. It's a journey which will take me from mysterious
00:00:26pyramids and lost cities to the skyscrapers of New York.
00:00:29I've been on the road for two and a half weeks. Leaving behind South America, I
00:00:59fly from Brazil to the southern Mexican state of Chapas.
00:01:29I'm in the rainforest of southern Mexico, and it's here that civilization started to emerge
00:01:413,000 years ago.
00:01:46I'm searching for a treasure created by this most bloodthirsty of civilizations.
00:01:51Oh, now, here's a clue. An ancient structure. I'm obviously heading in the right direction.
00:02:04For centuries, this dense forest concealed a shocking and grisly secret. A lost city from
00:02:10which human sacrifice was a way of life.
00:02:14Palenque, the great city of the Mayans, built in the 100 years after 650 AD by King Pakal and his sons.
00:02:29What a fantastic commanding sight. There's the plain over there from the city. The king, his warriors,
00:02:39could watch what was going on. What we're seeing here is the sacred heart of the city, the temples and the palace.
00:02:50Palenque is one of the world's most remarkable ancient cities.
00:02:53It reveals so much about Mayan civilization, which dates back to 1000 BC or earlier. The Mayans ruled a vast empire stretching through Central America from Mexico to Guatemala and Honduras.
00:03:10The buildings at Palenque are adorned with release and hieroglyphs, which unlock the door to the sophisticated yet savage world.
00:03:27The Mayans evolved a calendar and were great astrologers, but are best known for practising human sacrifice.
00:03:33At the heart of this violent and bloody world was King Pakal's palace.
00:03:42It was built high on a hill to make it easy to defend.
00:03:46Its thick stone walls were designed to withstand attack.
00:03:57Wars between rival kingdoms were ritualistic and governed by the movement of the planet Venus,
00:04:02so were known as Star Wars.
00:04:09This must have been a very important courtyard in the palace.
00:04:13This is where subjects came to pay homage to the king, to bring tribute.
00:04:19They would have walked through here and they would have passed these huge images of captives,
00:04:25naked figures of warriors taken in war, people who had been humiliated.
00:04:34These were a warning to the subjects coming through to pay homage.
00:04:39These men have rightfully miserable faces, even dead.
00:04:42naked, which was a sign of humiliation in this culture.
00:04:47And this figure at the end is strange.
00:04:49Looking upwards towards perhaps where the king would be, naked.
00:04:55And with, again, this gigantic penis. I wonder why.
00:05:00I do know that part of the ritual of sacrificing a captive was often to mutilate,
00:05:10to cause pain, to, I suppose, prove the warrior was worthy of sacrifice.
00:05:15He wasn't meant to show the agony he was put through.
00:05:18And I suppose this could be a part of that ritual, the scarring of the penis is astonishing.
00:05:23Blood sacrifice was at the core of the Mayan way of life.
00:05:40This is an altar.
00:05:42And some people believe this is where the Maya sacrificed captives taken in war.
00:05:49These unfortunate chaps would have their heads cut off.
00:05:52Or, more disturbing, their hearts plucked out.
00:05:57And while the hearts still pumped, the blood would be smeared over the gods kept in the temple.
00:06:05And then the body skinned.
00:06:07And the skin draped over the priests who would dance around.
00:06:11Very hard for us to take all this.
00:06:13But, of course, you have to remember, the Maya didn't hold life cheaply.
00:06:19They valued it greatly.
00:06:20That's the point.
00:06:21It was so precious.
00:06:23It was the most precious thing to give to the gods.
00:06:33Some mutilated captives would be dragged up the steep steps of the Temple of the Inscriptions
00:06:38to face further humiliation and agony at the top.
00:06:43But bloodletting was not restricted to enemies.
00:06:46After victory in battle, King Pacala himself would pierce his penis, let it bleed on the altar to thank the gods.
00:06:55While the Queen slit open her tongue.
00:06:57I'm descending into the bowels of the pyramid, into the Mayan underworld.
00:07:10Very steep steps.
00:07:11Above me is a spectacular system of vaults for which the Mayans are famous, these corporal vaults.
00:07:22Incredible structures.
00:07:24The amazing thing is, all of this structure and what's below, was lost for nearly 15 hundred years.
00:07:38Buried.
00:07:39Although I'm deep underground, while deep in the pyramid, it's incredibly hot and these stairs are really treacherous.
00:07:49They're now running with water condensation and I've got to be very careful not to tumble down and maybe never come back again.
00:07:57Hmm.
00:08:00My goodness me.
00:08:02They are slippery.
00:08:07Here's this massive slab active of the door, ceiling of the tomb and inside, here it is.
00:08:16The massive stone sarcophagus of King Pacal.
00:08:20And what we see is the lid suspended on the steel girders.
00:08:30Originally, it would have sat right down there on the sarcophagus itself, in which is this womb-shaped opening which received the King's body.
00:08:42So here we see a piece of art, as the Mayan people themselves would have seen it.
00:08:53Preserved for all those years.
00:08:57Incredible.
00:09:01One sees in the middle, the King himself.
00:09:04Now he died at the age of 80, but here you see him as a vigorous young man.
00:09:08He's lying on his back, he's falling down into the mouth, the jaws of death, represented by the great jaguar god.
00:09:18The god of the underworld, the god of death.
00:09:21Thus below the King, above him, rises this great tree, the tree of life, but in the form of a cross.
00:09:30The cross was a sacred symbol for the Mayan people.
00:09:33Fascinating.
00:09:34It represented the connection between the underworld, where I am now, the heavens above, and the land of the living.
00:09:43There was blood that was, in a way, the most powerful, sacred element of this world.
00:09:52Of course, the whole image here is to do with life coming from death.
00:09:58That's the point.
00:10:00The great cycle of existence.
00:10:03As the seasons come, as night follows day, and the sun returns in the morning,
00:10:09this is declaring that through death comes rebirth.
00:10:13Yet the Mayan way of life did die in around 900 A.D.
00:10:28Exactly why is the mystery.
00:10:30The best guess is a combination of famine and war.
00:10:32I leave Palenque with a yearning to find out more about the enigmatic civilisations of Central America.
00:10:48So I head to central Mexico, to a place which has been compared to ancient Egypt.
00:10:53The city of Teotihuacan is larger and older than Palenque, but lacks its atmosphere and has been over restored.
00:11:11It's not one of my treasures, but you can't deny its scale and power.
00:11:15The origins of Teotihuacan are surrounded in mystery.
00:11:21It may date from as early as 200 B.C.
00:11:25And the great creators of this city may have been the enigmatic Toltecs.
00:11:30At its peak is one of the world's largest cities, with a population of 125,000 people.
00:11:38It covers an area of up to eight square miles.
00:11:41The Temple of the Sun is the third largest pyramid in the world.
00:11:48After one at Cholula in Mexico, and the Great Pyramid in Egypt.
00:11:54Phew, some climb.
00:11:5763 metres, probably more like 70 originally, with a temple on the top.
00:12:04An amazing achievement.
00:12:07Incredible view here.
00:12:08There's the Way of the Dead and the Great Street, leading with temples each side to the Temple of the Moon over there.
00:12:19Until recently, nobody knew exactly why these pyramids were built.
00:12:24Then archaeologists excavating the Temple of the Moon discovered a dozen skeletons,
00:12:29ten of whom had been ritually decapitated.
00:12:31So, like Palenque, this was once the scene of human sacrifice.
00:12:44To find my treasure, I must follow in the footsteps of the Toltecs,
00:12:50who in 750 A.D. mysteriously abandoned Teotihuacan,
00:12:53and built a new capital at Tolentuna.
00:13:05Just a few ruins of this once great city survive,
00:13:09but these include four mighty warriors.
00:13:11Here, are the great, most moving memorials to the Toltec people.
00:13:29These great statues, only discovered in the 1940s, buried in a trench.
00:13:45They date from about 900 A.D.
00:13:47and they were thought to be columns supporting a temple on the top of a flat pyramid.
00:13:54The detail suggests that they were representing warriors or guardian spirits.
00:14:01Warriors because they have this feathered headdress of a warrior,
00:14:05and they're holding bows, arrows and spears.
00:14:07The god they were guarding is revealed, suggested anyway, by some of the detail.
00:14:16The starlighted butterfly up there, and below the feet, have feathers.
00:14:25These are emblems of the great god of the Toltecs.
00:14:28And on the rear of this great warrior or guardian is this, um, solar disk.
00:14:38Here it is.
00:14:40In the centre, a face, the sun god.
00:14:43And here, are carvings.
00:14:46You'll speculate this might be writing.
00:14:49Noah's deciphered it.
00:14:51Also, there's evidence here of colour, this red here.
00:14:55So all four of these great giants originally would have been brightly coloured.
00:15:13The giants give a hint of just how splendid the city of Tolentula must have been.
00:15:18The later Aztec people told of incredible Toltec treasures.
00:15:27These have long since disappeared, but a series of carvings give an insight into their sinister beliefs.
00:15:33I'm in a temple area at the base of the pyramid, and there are amazing images on the wall.
00:15:48Jaguars, ferocious heads.
00:15:52Over there, rattlesnakes devouring human beings.
00:15:57Scowls, amazing.
00:15:59But the mighty Toltec Empire disappeared in rather mysterious circumstances in the late 12th century.
00:16:08It is said that its great king-priest was exiled.
00:16:13He was associated with the great god Quetzalcoatl, the god of the Toltecs.
00:16:18This god had a white face and a grey beard, always shown as that.
00:16:25And it was said that one day he would return from the east to repossess his land.
00:16:30This god, of course, did return, but not quite as expected.
00:16:35A man did come from the east, white face, grey beard.
00:16:39He was Cortes.
00:16:40Cortes was a Spanish conqueror who arrived in 1519.
00:16:45By this time, the Aztecs were ruling Mexico.
00:16:49Their emperor, Montezuma, mistook Cortes for Quetzalcoatl and welcomed him as a saviour.
00:16:57This proved to be the downfall of Aztec civilisation.
00:17:01The ancient culture of Central America was mercilessly destroyed.
00:17:08The Spaniards laid waste to Aztec cities, looted their treasures and slaughtered the population.
00:17:31My journey now takes me to Mexico City, a sprawling metropolis of 22 million people.
00:17:48It's here where the Spanish conquerors built their capital on the site of a great Aztec city.
00:17:54Mexico finally gained independence from Spain in 1821,
00:17:58leaving the Catholic Church and a succession of dictators and emperors
00:18:03to fight for the soul of the nation.
00:18:08In the 1920s, Mexico enjoyed a great renaissance in the arts,
00:18:12fied by the idealism of the political left.
00:18:15From this was born my next treasure, the first painting on my journey.
00:18:20However, its story doesn't start here, but thousands of miles away.
00:18:28It's the story of two men who embody one of the great struggles of the 20th century,
00:18:34between capitalism and communism.
00:18:37In 1933, the American tycoon Nelson Rockefeller commissioned the left-wing Mexican artist,
00:18:44Diego Rivera, to paint a huge mural in his flagship office block in New York City.
00:18:49Rockefeller was so much offended by the content of the painting that he had it destroyed.
00:18:58But that wasn't the end of the story. The artist made sure of that.
00:19:02Revere wanted to bring his murdered mural back to life, and he achieved it here,
00:19:15in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City.
00:19:18This was painted in 1934, and this version is called Man, the Controller of the Universe.
00:19:25And we see in the centre of the picture, man, the worker, using modern technology to look into the future,
00:19:36to control the future, to select the world in which he wants to live.
00:19:41The painting tells another story. It divides in half.
00:19:45It's the conflict of two world visions. The conflict between communism and capitalism.
00:19:54Here, on the left, between the wings, one sees a nightclub scene, a speakeasy.
00:20:00Men and women drinking martinis, I think. Obviously, this is decadence of capitalism.
00:20:06There's a lovely little portrait here of Rockefeller.
00:20:09Then, there's a strange image indeed.
00:20:12A great Roman or Greek statue looking down rather threateningly, and around its neck, a crucifix.
00:20:20This is a cry for the indigenous peoples of this land and their ancient religions and culture.
00:20:27And he obviously sees the church as a tool in the hands of the capitalists to oppress and suppress the spirit
00:20:34and the nature of the people, the true ancient people of this land.
00:20:39Then, in the centre, you're seen again from New York.
00:20:43Police attacking workers.
00:20:45And there's police on horses with batons thumping on their heads.
00:20:50A scene of skyscrapers. Amazing image.
00:20:52Over here, though, we see the artist's ideal universe.
00:20:55This half of the painting is dedicated to the beauties, the benefits of communism.
00:21:10We see, there, one of the great powers of early communism, Lenin, holding hands with the workers.
00:21:18At the top, workers marching together.
00:21:25Below them, the red flag being held by Marx and Trotsky.
00:21:29Trotsky, a man that came to Mexico and that Rivera knew in the late 1930s.
00:21:35So, there we are. An incredible, powerful image of how things ought to be.
00:21:39But, of course, reflecting back with perspective of history, it has a certain sadness, indeed absurdity, really.
00:21:49The whole vision offered up here has crumbled.
00:21:56And the evil world of capitalism, which the artist here is doing his best to destroy,
00:22:03has flourished and gained new strength.
00:22:05In a way, it's a sad doctrine, this too. A great aspiration, not realised, partly because of the weakness of the politicians who had the world in their hands.
00:22:26And also sad because the artist himself proved to be a lesser man than the painting proclaims.
00:22:37Rivera's politics may have been socialist, but his way of life wasn't.
00:22:41He was intoxicated by the glamour of high living.
00:22:43I wonder what Rivera would make of modern Mexico, where capitalism has triumphed.
00:22:53He'd probably feel very much at home.
00:22:59When I go for supper in the Plaza Garibaldi, I'm immediately pounced on by dozens of mariachi singers.
00:23:04Tonight I'm going to be serenaded, whether I like it or not.
00:23:14My ears take a battering from this strange cacophony.
00:23:20I've been on the road for almost three weeks and it's beginning to take its toll.
00:23:27The following day I head for another country, the most powerful on earth.
00:23:45The flight across a stunning landscape of the south-western United States brings much-needed calm and respite.
00:23:51The USA is a wonderfully curious creation.
00:24:05In little more than two centuries, its great melting pot of peoples has achieved a powerful sense of identity and grown to world domination.
00:24:21In my short time here, I hope to dig beneath the surface and through my treasures learn more about the way the United States, the land of the free, views itself.
00:24:36My first treasure here is sure to offend some people, but it's arguably the single object which best defines the United States.
00:24:44It's a dark, indeed a deadly treasure that enabled white Europeans to express their conviction that it was their manifest destiny to possess this land and in the process to oppress its indigenous peoples.
00:25:02To find it, I've come to Cortez in Colorado.
00:25:05I have an appointment with Dale, alias William D. Foote of the Windy Gap Regulators Gun Club.
00:25:12Hi. How are you doing?
00:25:13Very well.
00:25:14Nice to meet you.
00:25:16Nice to meet you, Dale.
00:25:17Here's my treasure, the 1851 Colt Revolver.
00:25:28The 1851 Navy Colt revolutionised gun design and helped change the world.
00:25:36The Colt has a terrific beauty, violent beauty, I suppose.
00:25:51There's not another gun like them.
00:25:53It was the most popular of all of the handguns during the Civil War.
00:25:57And then after the Civil War, a lot of the soldiers were able to keep their weapons.
00:26:00And they moved west with them, and these guns made the journey west and were a big part in taming the western frontier.
00:26:09Interesting, of course, in American history, the gun has this very powerful role.
00:26:14It's almost a symbol of freedom and independence, going, of course, back to the Second Amendment, I suppose.
00:26:20Right.
00:26:21Citizens have the right to bear arms to protect the freedom of their country.
00:26:24And, of course, that is very much an issue today, isn't it?
00:26:27It's still very pertinent as a debate about the right to bear arms and the meaning of guns.
00:26:31Oh, yes.
00:26:32What do you reckon guns mean now in this land?
00:26:35There's several different sayings about firearms and freedom.
00:26:40An armed man is a free man. An unarmed man is a slave.
00:26:44And that's kind of the philosophy of people in this country for the most part, I think.
00:26:50We tend to appreciate our guns. We don't want to misuse them.
00:26:56We don't go around shooting everyone we see.
00:26:58But we have the right to defend ourselves and to protect our home and our families.
00:27:02And guns are an integral part of that.
00:27:05So Samuel Colt came up with the idea, invented the six-shot cylinder.
00:27:10The revolver, right.
00:27:11Yeah, the revolver.
00:27:12Mm-hmm.
00:27:13Six shots in, you know, without having to reload.
00:27:15Yeah.
00:27:16Made it possible to do a lot of damage to an enemy.
00:27:19Oh, definitely.
00:27:20Yeah, yeah.
00:27:21It was a pioneering mass-produced object with components.
00:27:24Right.
00:27:25Which one could, I suppose, the damaged components could be replaced.
00:27:27Exactly.
00:27:28Or, indeed, a new cylinder dropped in.
00:27:30It has an extraordinary functional engineered beauty, which also, in some extraordinary way,
00:27:39absolutely expresses its rather lethal power.
00:27:44You love them?
00:27:45Oh, yes.
00:27:46Yeah.
00:27:47The 1851 is my favourite of all the cap and ball revolvers.
00:27:51So, I say, these are component objects, very much pieces of pioneering 19th century industrial design.
00:27:58Right.
00:27:59Take apart.
00:28:00Remove this pin.
00:28:01The pin's the key, isn't it?
00:28:02It's called a wedge, by the way.
00:28:03I am sorry.
00:28:04A wedge, right.
00:28:05The wedge.
00:28:06Slide the barrel assembly off.
00:28:08Slide the cylinder out.
00:28:10And those are your three main components.
00:28:12Each object in itself is pure industrial design of the highest order.
00:28:18Just a very classic, classic pistol.
00:28:21Do you think you want to fire one of these?
00:28:22I think I do.
00:28:23All right.
00:28:24My finger on the trigger.
00:28:25Get into a position which feels comfortable.
00:28:26I'm going to squeeze it now.
00:28:27Good shot.
00:28:30You got it.
00:28:31You cock this time.
00:28:32Turn it sideways as you cock to keep that fired cap from falling down and blocking the hammer motion.
00:28:34Yes.
00:28:35I'm with you.
00:28:36So I put my finger on the trigger.
00:28:37Right.
00:28:38Squeeze it.
00:28:39I'm with you.
00:28:40I'm with you.
00:28:41So I put my finger on the trigger.
00:28:42Squeeze it.
00:28:43All right.
00:28:44All right.
00:28:45It's a good smell.
00:28:48good shot thank you you got it and you cock this time is turn it sideways as you cock to keep that
00:28:58fired cap from falling down and blocking the motion I'm with you so I put my finger on the
00:29:03trigger squeeze it all right it's a good smell black powder I love the smoke and I love the
00:29:17start of powder in the afternoon keep your hand on your gun don't you trust anyone
00:29:29there's just one kind of man that you can trust that's a dead man or a gringo like me
00:29:40all right
00:29:43good that was very enjoyable thank you
00:29:47I leave Dale feeling very uneasy the Navy cult is a fine and pioneering machine
00:29:56yet I feel guilty for admiring it because of its role in winning the west for the white man
00:30:01and destroying the Native American way of life
00:30:04I've always been fascinated by the early history of North America so for my next treasure I stay in
00:30:17Colorado but step back in time deep in the canyons of the Rocky Mountains lies the most important
00:30:25ancient site in the United States its very existence is a riddle
00:30:31it was created by mysterious people who disappeared without trace long before Europeans set foot on the
00:30:38the American's
00:30:50when it was discovered by two cowboys a century ago Mesa Verde rewrote the history of the west
00:30:56the West it showed that Native Americans in this region had lived in well-built organized and permanent urban communities
00:31:04within Mesa Verde are concealed the remains of a mysterious people who flourished here
00:31:21about a thousand years ago so little is known about them beyond the fact that they were great builders
00:31:31they constructed for themselves essentially urban communities and what one gets here is this
00:31:39incredible sense of their at oneness I suppose with the world in which they live these organic buildings
00:31:47but who were these remarkable people the answer is we really don't know sometimes they're called the Anisazi
00:31:57but that's simply the Navajo name for the ancient ones the fact is they've disappeared from history
00:32:05leaving behind this haunting imagery of these beautifully constructed buildings
00:32:18little is known about the spiritual beliefs of the Anisazi
00:32:21what we do know has been gleaned from intriguing underground rooms known as kivas
00:32:29most have now lost their roofs
00:32:34oh now this is a very good example of a kiva the circular subterranean room
00:32:42where the family would gather as if for prayers to tell tales
00:32:48and on the floor there are two holes a bigger hole fireplace the smaller hole is a sip-up pool
00:32:55that is a symbolic connection to the underworld to their place of origin
00:33:01returning to their place of creation into the room
00:33:04the small town known as cliff palace has 23 kivas about 220 rooms and was home to around 250 people
00:33:16here clearly see the front door a step instead of steps going up a small tapering entrance through
00:33:27which these people would have passed um see if i can get in here
00:33:32i suppose this is the right approach leg over oh yes
00:33:40oh
00:33:46astonishing
00:33:46this is where a family i suppose would have lived slept after a hard day's coil
00:33:53the fields above and the mesa they'd come down here
00:33:57another door
00:33:58oh
00:34:02ah good god absolutely amazing up here there are wall paintings if these people are as some people
00:34:11think toltecs who came up here from central america and then went back they'd have seen they'd
00:34:17remember these great pyramidal structures would be part of their landscape their experience from centuries
00:34:25past incredible being in here one connects so directly with this mysterious and lost people
00:34:39in the days of the anazazi the only way to reach the fields on top
00:34:43was by climbing the steep cliffs using footholds cut in the rock
00:34:47they must have had the agility of mountain goats i soon give up and resort to ladders which are treacherous enough
00:35:02as i explore it soon becomes clear that cliff palace was one of many small communities and homesteads
00:35:07built into the rockies
00:35:17and i can't help reflecting on the fate of the indigenous peoples of the americas stretching back thousands of years
00:35:30they were very sophisticated and very admirable particularly in their relationship with nature
00:35:37they respected the world in which they lived they recycled they worked with nature not against it
00:35:42they didn't obliterate their environment they didn't obliterate their environment we can learn from this
00:35:58we can learn from this
00:36:08from one of america's earliest known towns i travel 1700 miles to the most powerful place on earth
00:36:21washington dc is the home of united states democracy and the capital of the world in everything but name
00:36:29the united states proclaims high ideals of equality liberty and justice but can be overbearing in the
00:36:35pursuit of its goals in washington's imposing neoclassical buildings power brokers deliberate over the fate of nations
00:36:47but none of these not even the white house is my treasure instead i've chosen a building which
00:36:53is in my view a much more potent symbol of nationhood and independence
00:36:57it lies about a hundred miles south west of washington in the small virginian town of charlottesville
00:37:17monticello was designed and built from the late 18th century by america's third president and one of
00:37:22his most revered founding fathers thomas jefferson he drafted the declaration of independence which
00:37:30proclaimed that all men are created equal and laid down man's right to life liberty and the pursuit of
00:37:37happiness
00:37:42his home is not huge but it reveals more about the early history of the united states than any other building
00:37:48monticello's monticello's a declaration of independence american independence in bricks and mortar
00:37:56it's an affirmation of national identity a symbol for the new nation thomas jefferson wanted to create
00:38:04a new architecture in this new land an architecture which summed up the aspirations of the people
00:38:12and he did this by fusing different architectures italian renaissance architecture english
00:38:1818th century architecture and above all french 18th century architecture all these architectural
00:38:24styles were classical and in the late 18th century classicism had a very particular meaning
00:38:31in newly born republican france it had come to stand for revolution and the ideals of equality liberty
00:38:38and fraternity those great inspirational moments when people were free of the tyranny of kings and
00:38:46princes free to express themselves as individuals and that is what this building is meant to represent
00:39:03now the entrance hall like the exterior has a very particular and powerful meaning meaning to do with
00:39:11the new nation of the united states jefferson called this his indian hall because he embellished it with indian artifacts
00:39:22along with other artifacts and objects from this great new promised land making it clear that it had a unique
00:39:29very powerful individual identity as you walk around it's clear how much jefferson was inspired by european
00:39:37culture but monticello is more compact and practical than grand and ostentatious also on the ground floor
00:39:46the jefferson's own private world he wanted to make this house convenient and comfortable as well as a
00:39:53political statement and so here he has this some better old cope so he gets into bed this side so
00:40:00morning cock crows up jumps jefferson and steps straight into his study practical chat can get
00:40:10on with his scientific experiment and all the time one sees emerging in this house this new nation
00:40:17with all its power with all its complexity with all its contradictions of course
00:40:22monticello with his 5 000 acre estate offered an idyllic vision of the new world a green and plentiful arcadia
00:40:37but it has dark secrets that lie at the heart of the great american dream
00:40:45despite his fine liberal pronouncements jefferson supported the forcible removal of native american
00:40:50tribes from their land and exploited slave labor on his plantations at monticello
00:41:00when he died in 1809 jefferson chose his beloved monticello as his final resting place
00:41:09a memorial bears testament to his proudest achievements
00:41:13including the declaration of independence and a statute establishing religious freedom
00:41:17so those are great things admirable things but of course the other sides to the man
00:41:27he was a paradox even after he'd written the words but all men are created equal he kept slaves
00:41:36to serve his needs and um i suppose in a way one can say
00:41:41he was a victim of the age despite his uh vision he was very much man of the late 18th century he liked
00:41:50the common man but at a distance and in a way the paradoxes the flaws in his character are the
00:41:57flaws and paradoxes in the very nation which was involved in creating a nation dedicated
00:42:05to freedom to freedom to vision to the expression of individual rights
00:42:16jefferson is revered as a hero by many americans but not all as i find out when i talk to ben thomas
00:42:24who served as a marine corps sergeant in vietnam
00:42:27i'll say i'll say that he was a brilliant man but i also said that he helped write the declaration of
00:42:37independence which said all men was created equal he forgot the clause he should have had in there
00:42:44except black because at that time he owned 5 000 slaves when he wrote it
00:42:51so he said oh they're both the same they're both the same
00:43:21so i said i i beg your pardon my good man i said uh the women that slept with uh clinton
00:43:30did it because they wanted to the women that slept with thomas jefferson had to because he owned them
00:43:38that gentleman never spoke to me from that day until this very day he never spoke to me again
00:43:45so it seems the contradictions and the broken promises of the american dream can be traced
00:43:54right back to jefferson by the time i reached washington station i haven't slept for nearly 40
00:44:00hours and i'm weary beyond words the constant traveling along hours are catching up with me
00:44:17but there's one place which can reinvigorate me is my next port of call
00:44:31new york is one of the world's greatest and most vibrant cities
00:44:35i arrive at my hotel after midnight but my spirits perk up as i look out over the queensberg bridge
00:44:42i love this city it feeds the body and the soul
00:44:55and i'm off to see a treasure that represents the aspirations the pride the claims the hopes
00:45:16of a nation it's a symbol recognized around the world i want to see if it lives up to its reputation
00:45:33the statue of liberty is one of the world's most famous icons behind its kitsch image lie powerful truths
00:46:00like jefferson's monticello it embodies so much of what is admirable and what is troubling about the united states
00:46:13she stands 47 meters high hollow and inside is a spiral staircase and the idea was from the start
00:46:22that people would go up the staircase and go into a viewing platform just within within her crown terrific
00:46:29and this in front of me is the door the public door leading to the viewing platform as you can see
00:46:39it's closed the crowds of people here all wanting to get up it's been closed since the attack
00:46:45of a 911 on the world trace center tower there's the twin towers just over there
00:46:51sadly there are no plans to reopen the spectacular staircase
00:46:58offering this terrific and tremendous view from the image of liberty over the great city of new york
00:47:07if there is to be a symbol of freedom and liberty then it has to be just that the power
00:47:13to say we are a free country and we will operate
00:47:18as we intend as we intend our symbol to represent but no alas it's closed down terror has won and the
00:47:27internal world of the statues denied me everybody else bad
00:47:37it's a far cry from the spirit in which it was conceived in 1865. a gift from france to the united
00:47:44states the statue to celebrate the final abolition of slavery and the centenary of independence
00:47:51the statue was designed by the sculptor august bartholdi and the engineer gustaf eiffel
00:47:59they built the colossus out of sheet copper beaten and molded over steel and iron skeleton
00:48:05it was prefabricated in france in sections before being shipped to new york for assembly
00:48:13it was supposed to be the great symbol of freedom but from day one was dogged by controversy
00:48:20suffragettes protested that if liberty were a woman why did women have so few rights in america
00:48:26i suppose most troubling of all is the fact that when the statue was unveiled eventually in october 1886
00:48:35things had changed very radically for the worst in america
00:48:41draconian new immigration laws were brought in keeping out the sick and the poor criminals dissidents
00:48:46and chinese laborers people fleeing oppression and poverty were given the briefest glimpse of liberty
00:49:00as they arrived at ellis island in the shadow of the statue
00:49:07their dreams were cruelly crushed as they were turned away often with families torn apart
00:49:14many did not make it back to their homelands alive
00:49:22i find the statue so enthralling because it embodies the paradox of america
00:49:28she's certainly a very ingenious construction very elegant actually and of course she's one of
00:49:35this great family of colossal figures taking back to antiquity the colossus of roads there are many
00:49:42these great images around the world i've seen one already in rio christ the redeemer and she's certainly
00:49:48more handsome
00:49:55one sees her for what she is and she is a thing of beauty if flawed if there are many contradictions
00:50:02which there are
00:50:03and she is now what liberty what liberty what liberty now but nevertheless as an ideal as an
00:50:11aspiration she is sublime
00:50:19in 1886 the statue of liberty must have seemed like a giant all that was soon to change
00:50:31the 20th century held in an ambitious new age for america one which is encapsulated by my next treasure
00:50:38when you think of the great modern cities you picture a tower in skyline this brave new world started
00:50:47in new york and chicago more than a century ago
00:50:52manhattan was become the world's first vertical metropolis a showcase for the engineering miracle
00:50:58called the skyscraper the statue of liberty aspired to the american dream but the skyscraper delivered it
00:51:08it has become the great symbol of commerce and capitalism
00:51:11my next treasure is a skyscraper my challenge is choosing one there are so many contenders
00:51:27the flat iron building is the best of new york's early skyscrapers completed in 1902 to the designs of dh
00:51:43burnham it has a pioneering steel frame construction but outside it's clad in stone and made to look
00:51:51rather like an extruded italian palazzo rather charming also rather odd it's not my treasure
00:52:09for many the cries the building embodies a golden age of the skyscraper
00:52:14but art deco was a style of choice for the image conscious magnets of manhattan
00:52:27the empire state building and the cries the building both completed in the late 1920s
00:52:33are icons of skyscraper design they are technically superb both with massive steel frames constructed
00:52:42very very very quickly indeed yet over this modern steel frame there is still a veneer of history they
00:52:49still pay homage to the past the chrysler even with gargoyles
00:52:57they are superb but they're not my treasures
00:53:00in fact this is my treasure it's not the tallest at only 39 stories high nor is it the oldest
00:53:16it dates from the unfashionable 50s yet i adore the seagram building
00:53:21and many people will be surprised even shocked if i've chosen this rather than the flat iron
00:53:33building the cries the building or the empire state building but for me this is where those buildings
00:53:39were leading this is a quintessence of skyscraper commercial design amazing object
00:53:48is an honest ruthless elegant expression of its means of construction materials of construction and of its use
00:53:59the seagram building was designed by the german architect ludwig mis van der roe who emigrated to
00:54:05the united states in 1937. mis preached simplicity and clarity but he did not stint on costs
00:54:14his masterpiece has specially tinted glass to reduce glare and a steel frame was clad on the outside with
00:54:21bronze this made the seagram per square meter the most expensive skyscraper of its time
00:54:31the building is set in its own small square to give it maximum light and unlimited views
00:54:37unlike traditional new york skyscrapers which rose up from the pavement's edge to form dark
00:54:42canyon-like streets
00:54:51although the building doesn't have any obvious or superficial references to past historical
00:54:56styles of architecture mis was deeply influenced by architectural history particularly by the rational
00:55:04constructional systems of greece and rome he loved columns supporting entablatures the vertical and
00:55:11horizontal and horizontal and you get that here on the entrance his columns and his great horizontal
00:55:16element above and um the curtain walling which is this glass skin over the steel frames inside very
00:55:24rational simply a curtain wall is like a curtain wrapped around the structural frame not structure itself
00:55:31to be hung there incredible detailing i love these little steel eye section columns and brace up the whole curtain wall there
00:55:39the entrance hall absolutely fascinating very revealing this is bold simplicity very vocal simplicity
00:56:07and he said less is more and this is it just beauty coming from the simplest of forms
00:56:17he got the essence of things dripped back inspired by history but he wanted to get to the central
00:56:25qualities of history he loved classical proportions golden section root two two to one proportion those
00:56:32things he believed would give power and memory to the most simple of spaces and here you see it in his entrance hall
00:56:39a powerful space achieved simply by proportion no obvious overlay of grandeur or of history i love it
00:56:48one two three four simple lift doors punched in a wall but of a beautiful proportion with incredibly simple
00:56:55detailing that's what it's about power through simplicity less is more god in the detail
00:57:06of the
00:57:19of the
00:57:2138 38 38th floor astonishing lift this dates apparently from 1958 when the building was complete incredible oh my
00:57:30goodness it's a sort of dazzle dazzle pattern but here we see me sort of high tech this is almost 50
00:57:37years old this interior it's so modern pioneering cutting edge still that's the thing when you get to the
00:57:43essence of things it's timeless isn't it beautiful detail here everything's thought out and reduced to
00:57:50the functional essence i love this sort of steel and copper cladding
00:57:58peeping for each floor so here we go level 38 at the top of the building more or less
00:58:06the floor is currently unoccupied and shows off the benefits of this type of building
00:58:11now this is the great thing about metal framed buildings they're very flexible all the loads are
00:58:23carried on columns and one could have partitions like this put in and moved around they're not
00:58:28structural so it has a great i say open plan a very good sort of thing for uh all sorts of different
00:58:36uses and um ah vindicated really light flooding in and terrific views out the whole point as i said
00:58:47before this sort of architecture with the curtain walling being entirely glazed one has glass from
00:58:55floor to ceiling and no wall because the uh the structure is being carried on the columns back there
00:59:03all the occasional columns are over there so i say here we get it the whole point we're building like
00:59:10this light flooding in terrific views out the skyscraper reaches apogee in manhattan but somewhere along
00:59:28the line the bold and ethical vision of building cities in the skies has been lost and confused
00:59:46skyscrapers are part of a an urban ideal part of a vision of a futuristic city of towers they were meant
00:59:55to harness technology to help man they were to realize high-rise housing giving working people
01:00:05light healthy area homes with a great prospect or they're meant to provide commercial space in tight
01:00:15city centers but the vision was betrayed the high-rise housing became housing hells terrible
01:00:25ghettos and office blocks really became images of commercial greed so towers have become symbols of all
01:00:34that's wrong with modern urban living
01:00:42most of my treasures in north america were born from worthy principles and high ideals
01:00:47it ended up being compromised
01:00:49and today this nation conceived in a battle for liberty and democracy offers a divided world as dark choice
01:00:59accept the america way or face the consequences
01:01:11place of the country
01:01:21to be the South
01:01:23will be managed to fight a war
01:01:25the world and the priests
01:01:26the country
01:01:27the people
01:01:28or the people
01:01:28they're here
01:01:31the people
01:01:32You
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