The builders’ challenge

Au cœur de Notre-Dame

An exploration of Rodez Cathedral and its stained glass windows: praying figures and scientific imagery. A study on color, repetition and flickering consisting of 292 photographs.

The collaboration between architects, scientists, archaeologists and engineers in their efforts to restore Notre Dame.

Taking you back inside the world-famous Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris in France. It’s three years since the inferno devastated the vast timber and lead roof and the 850-year-old Gothic masterpiece is now at a critical turning point. Work to rebuild the monument is being ramped up, with 200 scientists, historians, restorers and construction workers now on site. They’re racing to meet an ambitious deadline; to reopen Notre Dame to the public ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games to be held in Paris. 1,200 tons of scaffolding now fills the cathedral, giving the team unprecedented access to every inch of the structure. This not only allows them to restore Notre Dame, but also solve its architectural mysteries.

Sur les pas de Marie

An epic ramble from Winchester to Canterbury, through Hampshire, Surrey and Kent with picnics, pints and much prettiness on the way.

The city of Ordos, in the middle of China, was build for a million people yet remains completely empty. Ordos is not so much a place but a symbol of babylonic hype. But nothing will change - as long as people believe.

David Hockney undertakes a commission to design and install a stained-glass window in Westminster Abbey to commemorate the sixty-fifth year of Queen Elizabeth II's reign.

Hitch a ride with a glamorous blonde in a convertible sports car, and take a spin around the seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare and its surroundings.

Katedrála zázrakov

For most of America's history, sacred buildings represented our greatest feats of innovative engineering and artistic design. Unlock the elements of design that make these structures so fascinating and unveil the meaning in religious architecture, ranging from grand cathedrals and simple country churches to synagogues and mosques.

Author David Macaulay hosts CATHEDRAL, based on his award-winning book. Using a combination of spectacular location sequences and cinema-quality animation, the program surveys France's most famous churches. Travel back to 1214 to explore the design of Notre Dame de Beaulieu, a representative Gothic cathedral. The program tells period tales revealing fascinating stories of life and death, faith and despair, prosperity, and intrigue.

Big fan of episcopal residences? Take a rose-tinted look at the historic city of Wells.

A film about astronomy which also happens to show views of the ancient city of Winchester, before focussing on a particular house in the suburbs with its own observatory.

These skyscrapers of stone dominated skylines for nearly a thousand years. Now, a team of scholars and builders investigates how they we went up, and why some of the tallest fell down. Embedded in stone and stained glass, they uncover a hidden mathematical code — ripped from pages of the Bible — that was used as a blueprint to build the great Gothic Cathedrals.

A large crowd and choir, on an historic day at York Minster, greet the arrival of a replacement big bell, watching and singing as labourers manfully slide the 10 ton bell off a truck.

Paris, 1482. Today is the festival of the fools, taking place like each year in the square outside Cathedral Notre Dame. Among jugglers and other entertainers, Esmeralda, a sensuous gypsy, performs a bewitching dance in front of delighted spectators. From up in a tower of the cathedral, Frollo, an alchemist, gazes at her lustfully. Later in the night, Frollo orders Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer and his faithful servant, to kidnap Esmeralda. But when the ugly freak comes close to her is touched by the young woman's beauty...

Captain Etienne Navarre is a man on whose shoulders lies a cruel curse. Punished for loving each other, Navarre must become a wolf by night whilst his lover, Lady Isabeau, takes the form of a hawk by day. Together, with the thief Philippe Gaston, they must try to overthrow the corrupt Bishop and in doing so break the spell.

Murder in the Cathedral is a story about Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, and his struggles against temptation and personal vanity prior to his murder in the great Cathedral.

Isolated bell-ringer Quasimodo wishes to leave Notre Dame tower against the wishes of Judge Claude Frollo, his stern guardian and Paris' strait-laced Minister of Justice. His first venture to the outside world finds him Esmeralda, a kind-hearted and fearless Romani woman who openly stands up to Frollo's tyranny.