Building the Ancient City: Athens and Rome

Building the Ancient City: Athens and Rome: Episode 1: Athens

BBC Two

BBC Two is a TV channel that started broadcasting on the 20th April 1964.

Episode 1

Episode 1: Athens

Athens

BBC Two - Building the Ancient City: Athens and Rome, Athens

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill explores how ancient Athens gave birth to the idea of democracy.

Documentary series exploring the ancient cities of Athens and Rome. Professor Wallace-Hadrill meets people who see ancient Athens as a model for today's great cities.

In the opening episode of the series, Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill takes us on a journey across stunning locations in Greece and Italy to find out how Athens gave birth to the idea of a city run by free citizens 2,500 years ago. Every aspect of daily life from defence to waste disposal was controlled not by a king, but by the Athenians themselves. Ultimately, this radical new system would define a way of life and the Athenians would give it a name. They called it people power, demo-kratia or democracy. On our journey we meet the people who still see ancient Athens as the model for running the great cities of today, including perhaps the ancient capital's greatest champion in our modern one - Boris Johnson.

We discover how the Greeks created the first system of open government, and wrote the first constitution that laid down the rights of Athenian citizens nearly 2,000 years before our Magna Carta. Its creator was born in the 7th century BC, and even more surprisingly, the only surviving ancient copy is found on a papyrus not in Greece or Rome, but hidden away at the British Library in London, and it has never been filmed before. Andrew explains that it was this citizen-centric approach which created institutions that would build a city which was the envy of its day, with public libraries, public law courts, a public water supply and public space. In so doing, Athens would set a benchmark not just for the cities of the Ancient World, but also for those of the present and the future.

Building the Ancient City: Athens and Rome: Episode 2: Rome

Episode 2

Episode 2: Rome

Rome

BBC Two - Building the Ancient City: Athens and Rome, Rome

Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill reveals how the Romans made their ancient megacity work.

Documentary series exploring the ancient cities of Athens and Rome. Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill reveals how the Romans made their ancient megacity run.

Rome was the world's first ancient megacity. At a time when few towns could number more than 10,000 inhabitants, more than a million lived in Rome. But in a world without modern technology, how on earth did the Romans do it? How did they feed their burgeoning population, how did they house them, and how did they get them into town without buses or trains? How on earth did the Romans make their great city work? 

In the final episode of the series, Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill takes us up ancient tower blocks, down ancient sewers, and above 2,000-year-old harbour basins still filled with water, to find out. He reveals how this city surpassed all those from the ancient world that had gone before.

From the pedestrianisation of the forum to a global transport hub built right next to modern Italy's transport epicentre, Fiumicino Airport, we see how this visionary approach to public projects was not matched for nearly 2,000 years. We discover how Nero - the emperor blamed for fiddling whilst Rome burned - was in fact responsible for the transformation of the finest fire brigade in the ancient world and the creation of the first fire regulations. We uncover made-over Roman apartment blocks complete with piped water, and modern libraries that are in fact ancient Roman buildings constructed two millennia ago. 

Last but not least, Professor Wallace-Hadrill uncovers the secret of Rome's success - the planning still captured on pieces of an 1,800-year-old marble map of the city, a map which shows that astonishingly, in many places, the street plan of Ancient Rome mirrors that of the city today in exact detail.

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Building the Ancient City: Athens and Rome

Episode 1: Athens

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Building the Ancient City: Athens and Rome

Episode 2: Rome

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