Treasures of the World with Bettany Hughes - Season 1, Episode 2 Malta
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00:00I'm traveling the world, exploring secrets and wonders,
00:08an adventure of discovery,
00:10to try to understand the story of humanity.
00:14I just can't believe I've been allowed down here.
00:18This is absolutely incredible.
00:22Islands can offer escape, sanctuary,
00:27encourage resilience in the face of adversity,
00:31and allow civilizations to meet.
00:35Today, the island of Malta.
00:43Its story is unique and brilliantly rich,
00:46so I'm very lucky to get to explore it.
00:51At only 17 miles across,
00:53Malta may be the world's 10th smallest country,
00:56but this tiny island is a rich layer cake of history.
01:05Malta's strategic location,
01:07right at the very heart of the Mediterranean,
01:09means it's attracted friends and foes.
01:12It's been fought over by foreign powers for thousands of years.
01:17So, from Stone Age travelers, to Crusader knights,
01:21to British royalty, all kinds of outsiders have left their mark here,
01:25meaning this is one of the most remarkable time capsules in the world.
01:32With fabulous access to the island's treasures,
01:36I'm exploring what the story of Malta reveals about the world and us.
01:44The Maltese Archipelago sits between Africa and Europe,
01:49and my first treasure exists thanks to that pivotal location.
02:13It's a 500-year-old wonder of construction,
02:17a huge, imposing city fortress,
02:21a reminder that crises can spur creativity.
02:31This is one of the most strategic spots in the whole of the island.
02:35You control this vantage point, and you control the Grand Harbour,
02:39and therefore you control the island of Malta,
02:41and beyond that, hundreds of miles' worth of seaways
02:45right across the Mediterranean.
02:50This is Fort St Angelo, the gateway to Malta.
03:02The lion's share of what you see today
03:05was built by the Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St John.
03:10Under their command, this fort witnessed one of the most vicious
03:14and game-changing conflicts in history.
03:23The story of the Knights starts far from here, in Jerusalem,
03:27in the 11th century, when the Christian Order was founded
03:30to defend the Holy Land and the pilgrims who travelled there.
03:34For 200 years, they were in the Middle East,
03:38and stayed until Muslim forces took over the region
03:41and they were kicked out.
03:44They searched for a permanent base.
03:48In 1513, the key power player of the day, the Holy Roman Emperor,
03:53finally found the Knights a new home, this place.
03:58At that point, a half-ruined castle, this could be an ideal HQ.
04:05However, there were two conditions.
04:07Every year, the Knights had to supply the Emperor
04:10with a single peregrine falcon,
04:13and they had to promise to wage incessant war
04:16against pirates and infidels.
04:21The falcon was easily enough done.
04:24As for pirates and infidels, that was a bigger ask.
04:29The Emperor had in mind the superpower of the day,
04:33with the help of the Roman Turks,
04:35steadily expanding their empire with their eyes on Malta.
04:40The Knights had to weaponise their new base,
04:43so they expanded outwards, beyond the castle,
04:47constructing massive fortifications on the rocks all around.
04:51Once secure, the Knights, known as Hospitallers,
04:55practised what they preached.
04:59CHOIR SINGS
05:12Because the Knights were monks, they were celibate,
05:16and they took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience,
05:20and they were obliged to do good works,
05:23and they looked after the poor, the needy, orphans and abandoned women.
05:30Treating all patients, including Jews and Muslims,
05:34with practices partly inspired by their time in the East.
05:46In May 1565, the Knights had to put aside their caring duties,
05:52every ounce of their soldiering skills,
05:56because the Ottoman Turks were on the attack.
06:02Malta was besieged.
06:06And Fort St Angelo was the heart of the Knights' resistance.
06:14On 19th May 1565,
06:17almost 300 Ottoman ships sailed into this harbour.
06:21The horizon was white with their sails.
06:24And then, as the battle began,
06:27eyewitnesses described the sea running red with blood.
06:34It was a struggle between two superpowers
06:37for control of the strategic island.
06:40We're told that the Ottomans had over 40,000 men
06:44against just 700 Knights and 8,000 soldiers.
06:50The defenders of Malta were outnumbered four to one.
06:57What followed was one of the bloodiest
07:00and most ferociously contested sieges in history.
07:11Time and time again, the Knights used incendiary devices,
07:16basically dirty flaming bombs,
07:19that they catapulted out at the enemy Ottoman ships.
07:24At one point, when the Turks had the upper hand,
07:27they took four headless bodies of the Knights,
07:30gashed crosses into their chests,
07:33lashed their bodies to crucifixes
07:35and sent them back to Fort St Angelo as a terrible message.
07:40In retaliation,
07:42all of the Turkish prisoners were decapitated
07:46and their heads were used as cannonballs.
07:53We're told that even the Maltese women and children got involved,
07:57pouring flaming oil from the ramparts.
08:02There was desperation and horror and suffering on both sides,
08:08Ottoman Turks and Knights alike.
08:17After four months, Fort St Angelo still stood firm.
08:22The Ottoman Turks retreated.
08:25They'd lost 30,000 men,
08:29Malta one-third of its population.
08:34But from the flames of destruction, something wonderful arose.
08:42Surviving the crisis of the Ottoman attack,
08:45the Knights were galvanised to build a splendid new city, Valetta.
08:52Valetta, named after the leader of the order,
08:55Jean Pariseau de la Valette,
08:58was a bold new dream metropolis
09:01and with its giant secure walls, the whole city became a fortress,
09:07a kind of child of Fort St Angelo,
09:10keeping the Maltese and its Knights safe.
09:16After the horrors of the siege,
09:18the Maltese resolved never to be vulnerable again.
09:22So they constructed a secret subterranean world under the streets.
09:29And I've been tipped off there is access down there,
09:33somewhere a bit special.
09:38Hi. Sorry to disturb you. I actually need to get down here.
09:42Would you mind just sitting on another table? No, not at all.
09:45It's OK? Yes, yes. Thanks. Sorry to disturb you.
09:48It's great. Thank you.
10:00Thanks. Bye.
10:17I just can't believe I've been allowed down here.
10:21The Knights and the people of Malta realised
10:24that they had a real ally in the form of the rock
10:27that the island itself is made of.
10:29So it's soft enough to carve through,
10:32but strong enough to support huge weight.
10:38It's perfect anti-siege engineering.
10:41Now the fortified city could be used as a military base.
10:46Down here, there are sophisticated sanitation systems
10:50and vaults for storing food,
10:52and huge cisterns like this that would keep the population of Malta
10:57from being overrun by the plague.
10:59It's a great place to live,
11:01and it's a great place to work.
11:03It's a great place to live,
11:05and it's a great place to work.
11:07It's a great place to live,
11:09and it's a great place to work.
11:11Huge cisterns like this that would keep the population of Malta
11:16fed and watered for months.
11:19This subterranean innovation helped keep the Maltese people
11:23safe from disease and starvation for centuries.
11:28Fired by the suffering of the Great Siege of Malta,
11:32centred on Fort St Angelo.
11:36Fort St Angelo is a wonder for me
11:39because it reminds us that necessity really is the mother invention
11:43and that we should understand history from all vantage points.
11:55Through the story of the world,
11:57islands have been engines of civilisation,
12:00stopping off points for travellers where people meet,
12:04where goods and ideas are exchanged.
12:07So my next wonder is the underwater treasure trove
12:11that surrounds Malta.
12:14Hundreds of finds with new discoveries every season,
12:19many rewriting the story of history.
12:22Hi, Timmy. Hi. Hi.
12:25Thank you. Welcome on board.
12:27Thank you so much. Great to be here.
12:29Shall we head out? Let's go.
12:33Timmy Gambin is a professor of archaeology
12:36at the University of Malta.
12:38He's hunted these waters for clues to the human story
12:41for over 20 years.
12:43And he's taking me to one of his latest finds,
12:47Malta's oldest wreck dating back 2,700 years.
12:57It's incredibly rare.
12:59It's incredibly rare.
13:01A relic of the Phoenicians,
13:04bronze-age super-sailors who linked up cultures across this sea,
13:09the Mediterranean, as they travelled and traded.
13:13He's fishing, is he? Yeah.
13:20He's fishing for octopus in the traditional way with traps.
13:28He saw his dog with his crew.
13:31Yes.
13:34Look at that dog.
13:46So I think we're just kind of locating exactly where...
13:49So we're trying to get right above the wreck here?
13:51Yes.
13:54Yeah, so we're on it. Are we? Yes.
13:57More or less.
13:59At 110 metres down,
14:01this is one of the deepest wrecks in the world under excavation.
14:05It's a whole boat, is it?
14:07It's a whole boat, minus the boat,
14:10because the wood has disappeared,
14:13eaten by the pteridos, by the shipworm, over the millennia.
14:19But what's left is the cargo,
14:21which indeed is still in the shape of a boat,
14:25and I can actually show you what the site looks like.
14:33Look. Amazing.
14:36I mean, this is unbelievably brilliant.
14:40So you can see the amphora with the handle here.
14:43They're actually stowed in their original position of one, two, three.
14:48These are the clay jars in which wine, olive oil
14:52and possibly other consumables, such as honey,
14:55would have been transported across the Mediterranean.
14:59How many amphorae in total?
15:01There are over 100 visible,
15:04but we know that there are many more buried in the sediments.
15:11So this is a time when we often don't have much archaeological evidence,
15:14so it's a real kind of mysterious time in the story of mankind.
15:17But this is where it was all happening then.
15:21It's the centre of a trading network
15:26that existed in this part of the Mediterranean.
15:30The Phoenicians, great influencers originally from the Middle East,
15:34moved goods and innovations between continents
15:38from the world's first written alphabet to cargo like this.
15:44When we recover objects from underwater sites,
15:49sometimes we're the first people to touch these objects in 2,000 years.
15:55So there's the physical connection,
15:58but one can't help but think of the potter that made the jars,
16:03the people that crushed the olives.
16:07So there's always this human element present in our work.
16:12So they have been lost, but they aren't lost without trace.
16:17Definitely not.
16:23Glimpsing the amphorae on the seabed was extraordinary,
16:27but I want to see the real thing.
16:30So the next day, Timmy calls me in.
16:34Timmy, hi, hi, how are you doing?
16:37Hi, good to see you again.
16:39Lovely to see you.
16:41Isn't she a beauty?
16:43She's totally beautiful, 2,700 years old.
16:47Have you analysed this? Do you know what it was carrying inside?
16:51In this particular case, we're leaning towards a transporting wine
16:56because the inside of the amphora is lined with pitch.
17:02The ancients did not like their wine
17:04tainted by the taste of the terracotta pot, did they?
17:07Absolutely not, but it's not wine as we know it today.
17:11It is concentrated.
17:13This concentrate would go into some form of mixing bowl,
17:17add water and then consumed.
17:20And do you know where it originated?
17:23I'm convinced that this is a locally made pot with locally made wine.
17:29This was a ship that was leaving the Maltese Islands
17:33on its way to trade elsewhere.
17:35I mean, it's tragic in some ways, isn't it?
17:38Because it didn't get very far from the coast.
17:41It's tragic because somebody lost a fortune.
17:46I'm absolutely certain that people lost their lives as well.
17:51But 2,700 years later, we're presented with this treasure of information,
17:57treasure that sheds light on a Mediterranean story that is yet to be told.
18:03Absolutely.
18:06There are treasures here lost by ancient Greeks, Romans, Arabs,
18:12proving Malta's a hinge between Europe and Africa,
18:16a tiny place that expanded civilisation,
18:21showing us that islands held power culture
18:25and that Mediterranean islands are the children of both East and West.
18:34My next wonder is a story of exile and achievement
18:40because five centuries ago, a notorious artist on the run fled here
18:46and produced a work that would mark a turning point in the history of art.
18:52Caravaggio was an Italian painter who was born in Milan in the 16th century.
18:59He was really a wild genius who created incredible works.
19:06He used real people as models, even for biblical figures,
19:12ushering in a naturalistic style, kick-starting modern painting.
19:21But for me, this particular painting is a real wonder of Malta.
19:28And the story of how it came to be created here on this island
19:32is one packed with intrigue, corruption and murder.
19:40This, Caravaggio's masterpiece, is particularly amazing when you know its backstory.
19:48There was a dark side to Michelangelo Morisi da Caravaggio.
19:58He'd wounded a police officer and he picked one drunken brawl after another.
20:04He was tortured and talented and dangerous.
20:09In his motherland, Italy, he killed a well-connected Roman in a duel.
20:15With a price on his head, he fled south to Malta.
20:23The knights immediately latched on to this celebrity
20:27and admitted Caravaggio as a novice to the Order of St John.
20:32From brawler to murderer to Christian knight, it was quite the transformation.
20:39Caravaggio was now, apparently, on the side of the angels
20:44and the knights capitalised on his presence.
20:50In 1608, they commissioned him to paint a grand altarpiece
20:54for this, their magnificent new cathedral.
21:09This is absolutely incredible.
21:15A showcase for their Christian order.
21:33This was a fulcrum of the knights' influence.
21:38And trendy, turbulent talk of the town,
21:42Caravaggio was asked to paint a statement piece, which is still here.
21:50At the time, Caravaggio was still on the run, still wanted for murder.
21:55So it's extraordinary he should be asked to make a painting for this holy place.
22:03I'm about to see it in the flesh for the first time.
22:08It's amazing.
22:18That is completely remarkable.
22:22Because you walk in, it doesn't look as though you're looking at a painting.
22:26It feels as though you come in and there's an open window
22:30and you're seeing something through it that you really shouldn't be witnessing.
22:39In a prison yard, an executioner is using a knife
22:43to decapitate St John the Baptist.
22:46A servant girl waits for the severed head with a golden platter.
22:52Other prisoners watch in horror from a window.
22:55They could be next.
23:00Knowing Caravaggio's life story and his state of mind
23:03helps you read this painting in a different way.
23:06This doesn't just feel like an illustration of a Bible story.
23:10It feels very personal, it feels really intimate.
23:13It's almost like photojournalism.
23:16Caravaggio would have seen men beheaded in the world around him
23:20and you wonder if this painting is talking about that
23:23or whether he's actually prefiguring his own fate.
23:31This is the only painting that Caravaggio signed
23:35and where he chose to put his signature was in the blood
23:39that's pooling out of John the Baptist's neck.
23:42That has to say something about his mental state,
23:46about how dark and desperate he felt while he was here.
23:54Shortly after completing this masterpiece,
23:57the fugitive was in trouble yet again.
24:01Another brawl and this time a high-ranking knight was severely wounded.
24:15Caravaggio's crime was really serious
24:18so he was brought here to Fort St Angelo for his incarceration
24:22and, believe it or not, the prison is still here.
24:31Oh!
24:38OK. I'm delighted I've got access.
24:42But I hate small, dark spaces.
24:45So I'm slightly anxious about this. OK.
25:00This is horrible.
25:02And look at these.
25:09Caravaggio being Caravaggio had absolutely no intention
25:13of being kept locked up down here.
25:16And somehow, I mean, we don't know how,
25:19after a few weeks he managed to escape.
25:22I mean, there's no way you could get out of here by yourself
25:26without being sort of bribed or maybe blackmailed somebody.
25:31What a stunt.
25:34Caravaggio vanished from his rock-cut cell
25:38and from the island of Malta.
25:47Even though Caravaggio wasn't here,
25:50the knights put on a kind of show trial.
25:53They put on robes to symbolise the man in front of this painting
25:58and they found him guilty.
26:00If Caravaggio had been here in person, he'd have been beheaded.
26:06As it was, they stripped him of his promised knighthood.
26:12Within two years, he was found dead in mysterious circumstances,
26:17quite possibly the knight's last revenge.
26:24Caravaggio's painting somehow fits
26:27with the wonderful, complicated nature of this place,
26:31an island that's rarely at peace
26:34but that also boasts a wild, dangerous beauty.
26:41That's why, for me, this maverick outsider's painting
26:46is a bittersweet treasure of Malta,
26:49created from the intense isolation of exile.
27:03From 1813 to 1964, Malta was a British colony.
27:09Our next treasure is a rather surprising relic of that age.
27:20This is a hidden wonder with a connection to the British royal family.
27:34The young Princess Elizabeth lived here with her new husband, Philip,
27:38a commander in the British Navy, between 1949 and 1951.
27:43What an amazing place to get access to!
27:50Yet, to take the crown from her father, King George VI,
27:54she could enjoy an island paradise.
27:59Today, it's in disrepair.
28:01Barely used since the royal couple left, it's hauntingly romantic.
28:11This really does feel like a place trapped in time.
28:16Empty for years, these rooms seem thick with secrets and stories.
28:23So, why Malta?
28:30Once they were married, Philip begged George VI
28:33to allow him to return to active service,
28:36rather than his desk job at the Admiralty,
28:39shuffling ships around all day, as Philip put it.
28:43The King agreed, but on the condition that Elizabeth didn't abandon him,
28:48but would return from Malta to Britain from time to time.
28:56At the centre of the Mediterranean, Malta was an ideal base for the Royal Navy's fleet,
29:02a command point for British interests.
29:05Philip was stationed here and Elizabeth joined him
29:09in time for their second wedding anniversary.
29:14While Philip was on active service, Elizabeth could revel in their new island home.
29:21I love the colour of this room.
29:24There's something here I just want to show you.
29:28So, this is all abandoned old sheet music.
29:33Isn't it lovely, imagining her here, enjoying an evening's music with friends?
29:39The house was lent to them by Philip's uncle, Lord Mountbatten.
29:43There are six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a grand hall and servants' quarters,
29:50with separate apartments for Philip and the princess.
30:02This is a corner where I feel a bit like I'm poking around a little bit too much,
30:08so this was the princess's private bathroom.
30:20And her bedroom, with a fireplace, very unusual in Malta at the time.
30:25It's said that she loved this house precisely because it's that,
30:29a house, not a palace, a home,
30:33offering a rare chance to live as a private person rather than a princess.
30:43An opportunity to experience a taste of ordinary life.
30:47Well, relatively ordinary.
30:51These are the servants' stairs and she came pretty well staffed.
30:55So, she had a footman and a lady-in-waiting and a detective
31:00and 40 wardrobes of clothes.
31:07But it wasn't all glamour and privilege.
31:11She did perform some royal duties while she was here,
31:14touring military installations and cutting ceremonial ribbons
31:18and visiting nursery schools.
31:20But she also got to be just an ordinary woman a lot of her days.
31:24She would have lunch with officers' wives and sunbathe
31:28and get her hair done in beauty salons.
31:31And we're told that sometimes she even handled her own money.
31:35One of the Duke's great friends and an equerry said
31:39that she only spent 10% of her time here being a princess.
31:47Less time as a princess seemed to suit Elizabeth.
31:50Leaving for a trip to London in 1949, she was visibly upset.
31:59Lady Mountbatten, who was travelling with her, said that as she left,
32:04she had a tear in her eye and a lump in her throat
32:08and it was like putting a bird back into a very small cage.
32:16In Britain, Elizabeth discovered she was pregnant with her second child.
32:21Princess Anne was born in August 1950.
32:25As soon as possible, the couple were back in Malta.
32:30The place had become a haven and this time they stayed even longer.
32:37But this private paradise existence couldn't last forever.
32:41After just a few months, duty called the princess back to Britain.
32:46This time for good.
32:49Her father's health was failing
32:52and Elizabeth had to fill in for the king more and more.
32:56So, sadly, in 1951, she had to say a final farewell
33:02to this house that she so loved.
33:08It's an extraordinary house with an extraordinary past.
33:14A wonder because it encapsulates what an island can offer.
33:19Sanctuary and opportunity.
33:22For Philip, a springboard to the world
33:25and for Elizabeth, a place of refuge where she could be who she wanted to be.
33:35My next treasure helped change the course of history.
33:44Despite this rather unpromising entrance,
33:47there's somewhere down here that shaped all of our lives.
33:51A network of tunnels whose nerve centre was the Lascaris War Rooms.
33:58These are the hidden headquarters for a secret mission in World War II
34:03that would prove to be a major turning point
34:06in the battle for Nazi-occupied Europe.
34:10Because the Germans knew that Malta was a prize they wanted to take,
34:15a small but crucial Allied foothold in the Mediterranean.
34:19So the Nazis decided to attack.
34:28The Italian fascists, their new allies,
34:31began to bomb Malta just 24 hours after they'd joined the war.
34:40What had been an island sanctuary had become a trap.
34:45From 1940 to 1942, 15,000 tonnes of bombs were dropped on Malta.
34:53A paradise had become a living hell.
35:01Malta fast became the most bombed place on Earth.
35:07This is just another raid.
35:10No less terrible and no more terrible than over 1,000 of it.
35:16Once more, the rock of Malta would provide a salvation.
35:21Tunnels, built almost 400 years earlier by the Crusader Knights of St John,
35:27were expanded to create air raid shelters.
35:36Oh, God.
35:40It's really damp. It's really close.
35:45The British brought in miners from South Wales and Yorkshire,
35:49along with Royal Engineers,
35:51to help make these a temporary sanctuary for the Maltese people.
35:59God, they just go on. They just go on and on down here.
36:03Once finished, these could house close on the entire population of Malta.
36:09So you can still see these little remnants of life,
36:13so the kind of bottles left on the ground,
36:16and these little shells, actually, it looks like tiles in there, does it?
36:20I don't know, they've tried to make a little bath from here
36:23or a kind of kitchen or something.
36:34Oh, look at that.
36:36I don't know if you can see that, it's a Virgin Mary
36:39that somebody's just carved into the rock.
36:42Oh, it's so sad.
36:44So it's like the stone and her spirit
36:47that's going to keep them alive down here.
36:52A family lived in each room.
36:55The tunnels became streets.
36:58So this must be a crossroads.
37:00OK, that makes sense.
37:02So I'd heard that they made the street system
37:06so it kind of mirrored the city above.
37:09Look, that's got the name on it, oh, my God.
37:12Look at that, so St Lucia's.
37:14So this must be, there's a St Lucia's Street up there.
37:18There's something so touching about that.
37:21It's almost like this, you know, it's a kind of parallel world
37:24they're trying to create down here.
37:27What, what suffering and what bravery
37:32to carry on life in this way.
37:39By the time the raids came to an end in November 1942,
37:43the city of Valletta's population had fallen from 21,000
37:47to just 6,000.
37:51The area had become the capital of the Roman Empire.
37:56The air raids might have stopped, but the war was far from over.
38:07The top-secret area of the underground network,
38:10the war rooms, could now come into its own.
38:15By May 1943, the Nazis had been driven out of North Africa.
38:21And for the Allies, the next obvious place to attack was Sicily.
38:26From Sicily, the Allies could exert pressure on Fascist Italy
38:31and northwards through Europe.
38:33But they knew that the Germans would realise that.
38:37They had somehow to persuade them otherwise.
38:41Sicily was such an obvious target
38:43that the Brits attempted all kinds of ingenious plans
38:46to divert the Germans' attention elsewhere.
38:51The most infamous aimed to throw the focus to Sardinia.
38:57A corpse, a real corpse, was dressed as a Royal Marine
39:02and the body was planted with fake papers
39:05identifying the man as a woman.
39:08A fake papers identifying the man as a William Martin,
39:13an officer who'd been lost at sea in a fictitious air crash near Gibraltar.
39:19Chained to the body was a briefcase containing more fake documents
39:24hinting that after Tunisia, the Allies were going to invade Sardinia.
39:31British intelligence rigged it
39:33so the body was washed up on a Spanish beach
39:36and then handed over to the German authorities.
39:40It was a great idea and it's a great story,
39:45but sadly this ruse had little direct effect
39:49other than to raise the alarm and the stakes.
39:54With the enemy's attention focused on Sicily more than ever,
39:58the Allies were under extreme pressure as they planned their invasion.
40:02They sent troops and officers from Britain, the US and Canada,
40:06a massive international effort,
40:08all to be commanded from Malta.
40:13The whole thing would be run from this room.
40:16The Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower,
40:20arrived to direct the operation and he sat right here.
40:26What followed, as the Allies prepared to take Sicily,
40:29was one of the largest amphibious operations ever attempted
40:33with more troops than D-Day.
40:37Operation Husky was launched in July 1943.
40:42It all began just before dawn on the 10th.
40:45Over the next three days, over 3,000 boats
40:49transporting 150,000 ground troops
40:54flanked by 4,000 aircraft in the skies
40:59made their way towards Sicily.
41:02They were met by over 260,000 enemy Axis troops.
41:0838 days of brutal, bitter fighting followed.
41:14Finally, the Allies won out.
41:18Italy's leader, Mussolini, was deposed and arrested.
41:22Hitler lost a key collaborator.
41:25The Allies gained a chance to reclaim Europe.
41:30From this very room, albeit with close on 25,000 casualties,
41:37the Allies had taken their first major step
41:41in the liberation of Europe.
41:44These war rooms made history and are to be treasured.
41:50Operations masterminded here saved Malta from further horrors,
41:55impacting all our lives.
41:59And there's a wonderful coda to this story.
42:06Malta's strategic location meant that everyone living here was in jeopardy.
42:12But the entire population rose heroically to the challenge.
42:17And in recognition of their continuous bravery,
42:20despite repeated aerial attack and besiegement,
42:25in 1942, the George Cross was awarded to the whole island,
42:31Britain's highest award for civilian bravery.
42:35And that is still emblazoned on the Maltese flag today.
42:51My next treasure is an extraordinary monument to the human spirit.
42:58A boat ride away on Malta's sister island, Gozo.
43:03Over 7,000 years ago, women and men packed onto flimsy reed boats
43:09and ventured out to this island to try to make a new life for themselves.
43:14They came from what's now Sicily and North Africa
43:17in search of new opportunities.
43:20They must have been curious or desperate,
43:23I mean, certainly with an incredible spirit of adventure,
43:26to brave these waters in a small boat, not knowing what lay ahead of them.
43:31In their new island home, they created something remarkable.
43:36Stone Age wonders, evidence of the power of human collaboration,
43:42the bedrock of civilisation.
43:45This is Gigantia Temple.
43:48It was built over 5,500 years ago,
43:52and it's one of the oldest freestanding structures in the world.
43:59Incredibly, raised 1,000 years before Stonehenge
44:04and the great pyramids of ancient Egypt.
44:08The word Gigantia comes from gigant,
44:11the Maltese for giant.
44:16There's a local legend that this place was built
44:19in a single day and a night by a giantess
44:23who, wait for it, was nursing a baby at her breast as she worked.
44:27And I'm not surprised they tell stories like this,
44:30because some of these stones are over five metres long
44:34and they weigh over 50 tonnes.
44:37There's no evidence of slavery from this culture.
44:41It seems that in a collective effort,
44:45they rolled the stones here.
44:49And the complex art this island community created together
44:54and shared celebrates the natural world,
44:59honouring their connection to nature.
45:03These temples are orientated to the movement of stars,
45:07to the rising and setting of the sun,
45:10so they must be something to do with the progress of time,
45:14with beginnings and ends, with death and regeneration.
45:18Basically, with the stories and mysteries of life.
45:22And I think that's what this temple is all about.
45:25It's a place where people come together
45:28and share their connection, basically,
45:31with the stories and mysteries of life itself.
45:36Incredibly, there are 42 more megalithic sites
45:41on this tiny archipelago.
45:44My next treasure is one of them.
45:47It's particularly special because it's a mirror image
45:51of this temple, but under the ground.
45:54And special for me because I've wanted to get access
45:59to this hidden wonder beneath the city streets of Malta
46:03all my adult life.
46:07Now, I have to say, I am properly hyped about this
46:10because this place is truly unique.
46:13There is nothing else quite like it from this time
46:16anywhere in the world.
46:19It's called Hypergeum.
46:22Literally, the under-earth place.
46:34This was only discovered by accident in 1902
46:38when builders were drilling for a well here.
46:49This is one of the best-preserved
46:52subterranean Stone Age sites in the world.
46:59This really is a labyrinth down here.
47:02It's actually making me quite nervous because I know
47:05there are at least 34 different chambers to get lost in.
47:09And its sophisticated shapes should look familiar.
47:14This is a kind of underworld version of the temples above.
47:19So you've got doors and windows
47:23and that beautiful corbelled roof has got a supportive beam.
47:27Which, of course, it doesn't need because it's underground here.
47:30But it's engineering that's being used to prove
47:33that this is a kind of twin of what lies above the earth.
47:39This was clearly built by the same people
47:41as the Gigantia Temple above ground.
47:44But the Hypergeum is even more impressive.
47:48Three storeys deep, reaching ten metres into the earth.
48:02It would have been the most massive effort
48:05to hack all this out of the raw rock.
48:08I don't know if you can see there,
48:09these are the marks left by the tools that they used.
48:12They were kind of prehistoric pickaxe made of horn or antler.
48:17And what you've got to think is that this was a time
48:20when life was really, really hard.
48:23So you didn't know if there was going to be disease
48:26or animal attack or crop failure.
48:28So death was always just around the corner.
48:31So to take time out to make this
48:33tells me that what happened down here
48:36really, really mattered to the people of the island.
48:42Because this is where those Stone Age islanders
48:45tried to make sense of the world and their place in it.
48:50This place is magical for so many reasons.
48:54But this surely has to be one of the stars.
48:58This beautiful figurine was found down here.
49:01This is a copy of the original,
49:04because the original was made over 4,500 years ago.
49:09Now, we don't know who she is.
49:12We don't know whether she's a goddess or a priestess
49:15or just an ordinary woman.
49:18Or, because she's lying in this perfect, peaceful sleep,
49:22whether what she represents is death.
49:26Now, she was found in that pit down there,
49:29mixed up with a huge number of human bones,
49:33because what this place was used for
49:37was a giant burial ground.
49:42As many as 7,000 people were buried here over time.
49:48Women, men and children, all in the same place.
49:59There are these incredible red symbols everywhere.
50:04They're on the ceilings and the walls,
50:06and they're very faded now.
50:08It's so frustrating, because we don't know what they mean.
50:10But the people here also covered the bones with red ochre,
50:16so this must be something to do with blood.
50:20It must be something to do with life and death.
50:24And I think they must have understood the magic of the cycle of life,
50:29that we're all part of a bigger matrix,
50:32that material never really disappears.
50:36It just takes a new form.
50:45Although most of the bone evidence has disintegrated,
50:48I'm incredibly fortunate to have access to this.
50:51I'm incredibly fortunate to have access
50:54to one of the few intact skulls excavated from the Hypogeum,
50:58belonging to a 25-year-old male.
51:02It is an amazing state of preservation.
51:07I have to say, it is such a privilege
51:11to be face-to-face with someone from this remarkable prehistoric world,
51:17and to just imagine what those eyes saw.
51:22This was an individual,
51:25a young man who chose to work together
51:28with those around him to pioneer new ideas,
51:32and who chose to be buried with them too.
51:36The fact that they chose mass burials
51:39surely says that togetherness hugely mattered to them,
51:43perhaps above all else.
51:46For me, these Stone Age treasures are all beyond wonderful,
51:52because they're a product of women and men collaborating,
51:56forming a society,
51:59the beginning of civilisation itself.
52:11So much has happened on this small island.
52:15Across the last 8,000 years,
52:18from the wildness of prehistoric temples
52:21to secret operations in World War II,
52:24from macho crusader nights to the delights of island life,
52:29this has been a place of salvation and of siege.
52:34But it's also important because it's a reminder
52:38that no man or woman is an island,
52:41that we're all the products of interaction
52:43and shared inspirations and pleasures and pains.
52:47And that, for me, is why Malta is a wonder,
52:51because it's a microcosm of the world
52:54and of the human experience.
53:13The Stone Age
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53:46The Stone Age
53:48The Stone Age