Dan Cruickshank's Adventures in Architecture - Season 1

Historian and writer Dan Cruickshank celebrates architecture as a creative force as he explores the world's greatest cities, buildings and monuments. In the first episode, Cruickshank explores how humanity has created beauty through architecture. He travels to Greenland to build an igloo, creating an architectural form that is under threat due to climate change. In China he scales the world's biggest Buddha and deciphers a temple in India rich with erotic images. He visits the Catherine Palace, a hot-blooded baroque masterpiece in the middle of snowy Russia. Finally, he uncovers the dark tale of Albi Cathedral, a building originally designed to suppress the local population but now an object of beauty and wonder.

Historian and writer Dan Cruickshank celebrates the creative force of architecture as he explores the world's greatest cities, buildings and monuments.

Dan travels the globe to explore how different cultures have created architecture inspired by our mortality. In the Czech Republic, he reveals the macabre tale of a chapel decorated with human bones. Even more shocking is the Yaxha Mayan pyramids in Guatemala, sites of brutal human sacrifice.

In Egypt, Dan explores how pharaohs ensured the passage of their spirit to the afterworld through elaborate mortuary temples. He visits Europe's greatest cemetery in Genoa, Staglieno, home to a spectacular collection of beautiful and erotic memorial statues. And finally, Dan comes face-to-face with death itself in Varanasi in India, a sacred Hindu town where people come to die.

Historian and writer Dan Cruickshank celebrates the creative force of architecture as he explores the world's greatest cities, buildings and monuments. Dan looks at buildings that evoke the image of heaven across religions and cultures, travelling to Egypt's Sinai desert, China's Hanging Temple, and Turkey's Suleymaniye Mosque, a building that evokes the gates of paradise. Finally Dan loses himself in the boisterous holy town of Sri Ranganthaswamy, a place sacred to the Hindu religion.

Historian and writer Dan Cruickshank celebrates the creative force of architecture as he explores the world's greatest cities, buildings and monuments. Dan explores buildings shaped and threatened by disaster. He risks his life to visit the Minaret of Jam in Afghanistan, a monument to peace and tolerance in the midst of a war zone. San Francisco is preparing for a cataclysmic earthquake - what role can architecture play in saving lives? And Dan reveals the tragic tale of Palmyra in Syria.

Historian and writer Dan Cruickshank celebrates architecture as a creative force as he explores the world's greatest cities, buildings and monuments. Dan sets out to reveal how architecture enables people tolive together across the world. He finds vibrant communities in extraordinary buildings - but why do some places succeed and others fail? To find out, Dan visits Brasilia, an ideal city built by communists, the Rockefeller Centre in New York and Dharavi in Mumbai, the biggest slum in India.

Historian and writer Dan Cruickshank celebrates architecture as a creative force as he explores the world's greatest cities, buildings and monuments. Dan examines buildings as gigantic statements of power. The fantasies of dictators, kings, sultans, warriors and the ruling classes are all exposed as Dan explores the world's palaces of power in Romania, the Middle East, the American South, Turkey and Kazakhstan.

Dan tells the story of Ceausescu's Palace in Romania, a colossal palace built by the 20th century's last communist dictator. He then travels to the Middle East to see Marqab Castle in Syria, constructed by the Crusaders to vanquish Muslims.

In New Orleans Dan explores an imposing plantation house which is in stark contrast to the slave cabins that it sits next to, and explores the living legacy of slavery. He also tells the history of the Topkapi Harem in Istanbul, a place where women too were slaves - but where they could also give birth to the country's next emperor. And finally, he visits Astana in Kazakhstan, the newest capital city of the 21st century.

Historian and writer Dan Cruickshank celebrates architecture as a creative force as he explores the world's greatest cities, buildings and monuments.

Since building began, architects have tried to build the future, create fantasy worlds, and even change humanity through new inventions. Dan travels to Yemen to reveal an ancient city of skyscrapers made of mud and explores the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, where society dreamt of reforming criminals into decent men, only to find their techniques made them mad.

Historian and writer Dan Cruickshank celebrates architecture as a creative force as he explores the world's greatest cities, buildings and monuments. Dan explores how architecture gives us pleasure, visitingthe luxurious Taj hotel in India, a fantasy castle in Germany, and the hedonist surrounds of an ancient Pompeii brothel. Finally, Dan explores the Villa Barbaro, one of the world's most beautiful country houses where pleasure was deemed to be created by perfect architecture.