The games and entertainment, plus violence as a political instrument, with the Battle of Laugaricio (modern-day Slovakia), portraits of Commodus and Lucilla, and the legendary Colosseum.

War, loyalty, citizenship and the plots of a changing empire with the massacres of Alexandria, portraits of Caracalla and Julia Domna, and the extraordinary Baths of Caracalla.

From Lugers to MG42 machine guns and the Pak40 anti-tank gun, James Holland uncovers how the craftsmanship of German weapons engineering was totally unsuited to fighting a long attritional war.

The aristocracy and the perils of power in the time of a feared emperor with Boudicca's revolt, portraits of Nero and Boudicca, and Nero's incredible palace of the Domus Aurea.

From Lugers to MG42 machine guns and the Pak40 anti-tank gun, James Holland uncovers how the craftsmanship of German weapons engineering was totally unsuited to fighting a long attritional war.

A room in Russia was described as the eighth wonder of the world, but it has left a trail of conspiracy and bloodshed since its mysterious disappearance during WWII.

Stalin rises as the leader of the Bolsheviks, and in Munich, the German Workers Party takes a new name: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter, or 'Nazi' as it would come to be called.

For 2,000 years, whoever controlled the Mediterranean controlled the resources of the known world. In WWII, this area was in control of the British Empire, and Mussolini wanted it back.

Friedrich Paulus and Erich von Manstein, two generals who charted opposite paths through the Nazi war machine - one broke under pressure, the other clung to his reputation.

Pierrefonds looks like a 14th-century fortress, yet it is a 19th-century masterpiece. We uncover how a ruined stronghold became a revolutionary hybrid of Middle Ages and Industrial Age innovation.

Rising 80 metres above Athens, the Acropolis is a high-speed engineering feat forged in an age of war and political ambition. This episode decodes the logistics behind the Parthenon.

Neuschwanstein is Louis II of Bavaria's 19th-century fairy-tale castle that inspired Walt Disney. Inside, medieval fantasy hides modern innovation: steel beams, plumbing, and central heating.

Begun in 1882, the Sagrada Família became Gaudí's radical engineering laboratory. In 2026, the church yet to be finished, builders use modern engineering to raise the 170-metre spires above Barcelona.

Hitler and Stalin begin to shape the course of history. President Roosevelt attempts to raise his country out of the Depression, and the world teeters on the brink of yet another World War.

The Eastern Front saw Hitler's most brutal WWII campaigns, but it is also where the Soviets, with mastery of the ground on which they lived, beat him all the way back to Berlin.

The disfigured mummy of the Younger Lady has mystified experts since she was first discovered over 100 years ago; investigators find out who she was using modern forensic science.

An Indian jewel at the time of the Mughal Empire is linked to centuries of greed and bloodshed, and a fatal road trip in 1950s Los Angeles extinguishes one of Hollywood's brightest stars.

With Nazi Germany's rise to power, an abandoned canal was resurrected; the true purpose of this project came into question with rumours it harboured a secret that could turn the tide of the war.

The games and entertainment, plus violence as a political instrument, with the Battle of Laugaricio (modern-day Slovakia), portraits of Commodus and Lucilla, and the legendary Colosseum.

Erwin Rommel earned fame for his tactical brilliance, while walking a tightrope between duty and personal ambition under Hitler's rule. As the tides turned, he's pulled into a plot against the Führer.

Pierrefonds looks like a 14th-century fortress, yet it is a 19th-century masterpiece. We uncover how a ruined stronghold became a revolutionary hybrid of Middle Ages and Industrial Age innovation.

Rising 80 metres above Athens, the Acropolis is a high-speed engineering feat forged in an age of war and political ambition. This episode decodes the logistics behind the Parthenon.