Alexandria: The Greatest City

5000 years ago the ancient Elamites established a glorious civilization that lasted about three millennia. They created marvelous works in architecture and craftsmanship. These works of art depict the lifestyle, thoughts, and beliefs of the Elamites.

This James A. FitzPatrick's People on Parade series short takes the viewer to Alexandria, Egypt, with emphasis on the modern nature of the city.

Starting from the colonial city of Trujillo, this documentary reveals natural and archeological features along the north coast of Peru, where the Moche culture thrived from the 1st Century BC to the 6th Century AD.

In the Formative Period 4,000 years before the Incas and the arrival of the Conquistadors, Peru’s earliest civilizations - the Chavín, Caral, Ventarrón, Sechin, Cupisnique, and Cajamarca cultures - built centers of learning and technological achievements, including the largest work of hydrological engineering in the ancient Americas: the Cumbemayo canals.

Dr Glenn Godenho goes on the hunt for the tomb of Cleopatra.

Maya legend tells us that there is a hidden underground cave below Chichen Itza, now high tech archaeologists are here to find the buried truth.

The mysterious island of Crete has always loomed large in imagination, as the home of the Minotaur -- that monstrous creature, half-man half-bull -- imprisoned in Daedalus' labyrinth. Before Crete collapsed in fire and violence, it gave birth to Europe's first civilization nearly 5,000 years ago, and boasted an advanced, prosperous Mediterranean civilization with hinged doors, flush toilets, and magnificent palaces. How did the Minoans live, and what brought this great society to such a sudden, obscure end? Modern archeology offers new insights into the everyday life in Minoan culture, and tantalizing clues about its tragic destiny.

Albert Lin and National Geographic Channel unearth the terrible secrets that lie hidden in the tomb of China's first Emperor. The Terracotta Warriors are just the tip of the iceberg in this mausoleum the size of Manhattan, that has gone largely unexcavated…until now. These silent statues guard explosive, macabre findings that rewrite history and paint a very different picture of the ancient world from what we thought we knew.

The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb is revealed for the first time in color, thanks to colorization of black-and-white newsreel and photographs.

Berlin’s Museum Island, the cultural center of the German capital on the Spree river, houses a large number of art pieces from all over the globe, from the Stone Age to the present day. A walk through their great institutions to marvel at their masterpieces.

Alexander der Große – Kampf und Vision

National Geographic follows archaeologist Ehud Natzer in his discovery of the tomb of Herod the Great.

Michael Wood travels through Syria and Iraq to uncover the story of Alexander the Great's decisive battle against the might of the Persian Empire in 331 BCE. Ancient writers agreed that it was fought somewhere near the city of Irbil in northern Iraq, but the exact location has never been discovered. Using dramatic new finds in the UK - a cuneiform clay tablet in the British Museum and a papyrus dug up in Egypt - Michael sheds new light on the course of events. Then to reconstruct the campaign, he follows Alexander's route through Damascus and Aleppo to the river Euphrates in Syria and travels into Northern Iraq with the British and US military.

Friends, contemporaries and even enemies of Alexander the Great gather in a tent to tell his tale through their eyes.

Come back with us to Ancient Greece, 2,500 Years ago to the original Olympic Games. The ancient Games, like our modern Olympics, included champions and cheaters, glory and scandals, bitter rivalries and contests of strength, speed and savage combat. Set in 448 BC when the pounding of horse's hooves and the brutal hand-to-hand combat could be heard and seen by the crowds that filled the Olympic stadium. This one-hour special event follows the glory and corruption of the arc of a single, five-day Olympiad. The competitions include chariot racing, running, jumping, discus, javelin and two man-to-man combat finals-boxing and pankration, a form of extreme fighting in which death was not uncommon. With the help of sports historians and great athletes such as George Chuvalo and Olympic medallists Donovan Bailey and Angela Schneider, viewers travel back to a very different life-in a very different world.

An account of the reign of Herod the Great, king of Judea under the rule of the Roman Empire, remembered for having ordered, according to the Gospel of Matthew, the murder of all male infants born in Bethlehem at the time of the birth of Jesus, an unproven event that is not mentioned by Titus Flavius Josephus, the main historian of that period.

In the first century, after the death of Herod the Great, Judea goes through a long period of turbulence due to the actions of the corrupt Roman governors and the internal struggles, both religious and political, between Jewish factions, events that soon lead to the uprising of the population and a cruel war that lasts several years and causes thousands of deaths, a catastrophe described in detail by the Romanized Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus.

In the heart of the Jordanian desert, the ancient city of Petra is full of mysteries. How was this architectural wonder created over 2,000 years ago? The technical prowess of Petra, an ancient city in southern Jordan, which was a wonder in the middle of the desert.

What is true and what is false in the hideous stories spread about the controversial figure of the Roman emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (12-41), nicknamed Caligula? Professor Mary Beard explains what is accurate and what is mythical in the historical accounts that portray him as an unbalanced despot. Was he a sadistic tyrant, as Roman historians have told, or perhaps the truth about him was manipulated because of political interests?

Ancient pharaoh Akhenaten was almost lost to history. Canadian archaeologist Donald Redford, who uncovered the foundation of one of the pharaoh’s many temples, attempts to finally piece together this great Egyptian ruler’s enigmatic story.