Original subtitles

Sunken ships filled with priceless cargo,

lost cities made entirely of gold

and ancient temples

that conceal untold riches.

There's something about hidden treasure

that captures our imaginations.

The idea that a vast fortune

could be buried underground

or lying at the bottom of the sea

inspires people to scour the globe

in search of both fame and fortune.

But are these treasures

merely the stuff of myth and legend?

Or are some of them so well-hidden

that they just haven't been found yet?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

Located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea,

this bustling port city contains remarkable ruins

that date back thousands of years.

And there are those who believe

that one of the most sought-after treasures

in history

may lie hidden within these ancient ruins.

The Holy Grail.

For archaeologists,

Acre is hugely significant.

It's one of the oldest

continuously inhabited places on Earth

going back 5,000 years.

There's literally layers of history there

still being discovered.

But, also, the significance is that it's the last place

that the Holy Grail is believed to have ended up

during the Crusades.

The Holy Grail?

The chalice that Jesus drank from

at the Last Supper?

For centuries, many have embarked on quests

in search of this sacred artifact

not only because it would be priceless

but also because it is thought to possess divine power.

While many have sought to find the Holy Grail,

it's believed that this precious relic

was once in the hands of a group

of medieval warrior monks

known as the Knights Templar.

The Knights Templar were

a very curious order of monks.

They were sworn, in fact, to protect pilgrims

to the Holy Land in the Crusades.

They were professional soldiers,

the elite fighting force of Europe.

And they became immensely wealthy

and immensely powerful.

But many believed that the Templars had,

if you want, an ulterior secret mission.

And that was to look for the Holy Grail

and other sacred relics all over the Holy Land.

If they did find the Holy Grail,

there was nowhere better

for the Knights Templar to bring their treasure securely

than to Acre,

which was a safe city with big, thick walls around it

and 12 towers

to defend the citizens from external attack.

If it's true that the Knights Templar

brought the Holy Grail from Jerusalem to Acre,

could it still be hidden in the ruins

that lie within the city?

Eliezer Stern is an archaeologist

with the Israel Antiquities Authority.

For nearly three decades, he has overseen excavations

of a massive underground Templar fortress

that lies beneath the Church of St. Andrew in Acre.

Under the church,

Stern has been investigating a sprawling network

of 13th-century tunnels and crypts.

These passages may reveal valuable information

about the Templar's activities in Acre.

The Knights Templar had this brilliant system.

They actually built tunnels

to what they called a treasure tower.

So, when there was a siege going on,

they would take the treasures that they've come across

throughout their occupation and their fighting

down the tunnels

and into the tower.

In addition to excavating the Templar treasury,

Stern and his team have unearthed more chambers

that are located

approximately ten feet beneath the main crypt.

But these monumental discoveries have revealed only a fraction

of this mysterious medieval city.

For Grail hunters, any new excavations in Acre,

it's obviously tremendously exciting.

And it's a city that's still yielding up its secrets.

And, so, there is a very good chance

that some of the treasure of the Templars,

including the Holy Grail,

are there waiting to be discovered.

Is the Holy Grail hidden

somewhere within the ruins of the Templar fortress

beneath the Church of St. Andrew?

Perhaps.

But some researchers believe that the Templars

took the Holy Grail to Europe

and that it could actually be hidden not in Israel

but at one of their many churches and chapels

located across the continent.

As the Knights Templar

lost their influence in the Holy Land,

the Holy Grail could have made its way to any number of places.

Rennes-le-Château in France is often associated with that.

This is a place where things would traditionally be hidden.

Researchers have long speculated

that the Holy Grail is hidden

at a well-known Knights Templar structure in Europe

such as Rennes-le-Château

or perhaps Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland.

But recently, new evidence has come to light

which suggests that the Templars may have actually kept the Grail

beneath a small church

located in a remote part of Poland.

The Church of St. Stanislaus

in the western part of modern Poland

is a-a red brick chapel that, in appearance,

really looks more like a fortress.

And the year of its construction, 1232,

was very much at the height of Templar building activity

across Europe.

As recently as 2020,

a research team using ground-penetrating radar

found evidence of tombs of Templar Knights,

of underground crypts and even a tunnel

that appears to link

the chapel to a well outside.

So something was clearly going on.

What we're seeing there

in Poland could be untouched.

Nobody knows what's really there yet.

So, it's gonna be very interesting to see

what they discover there as they continue to investigate.

Is it possible the Knights Templar

chose to hide the Holy Grail in Poland,

a place searchers would not suspect?

Uncovering the Grail here

or wherever else it may be hidden

would be a discovery of profound importance.

Because for Christians around the world,

the Holy Grail is much more than just an ancient chalice.

It is an object touched by God.

Strictly speaking, we talk

about the Holy Grail in technical terms as a cup.

But really, the Holy Grail is something much more profound,

much more sacred, holy.

There can be no doubt if the Holy Grail was found,

this would be hugely significant

for millions of Christians all over the world

to have a direct connection to the crucifixion,

to the Passion of Christ.

The discovery of the Holy Grail,

a tangible artifact held by Jesus Christ himself,

would offer a validation of faith

for billions of Christians around the world.

But the quest to find other hidden treasures

is often motivated by a much different kind of reward,

one firmly controlled by the power of obsession.

Explorer Ceslav Cieslar leads an international team

of researchers on an expedition deep inside the jungle.

Their mission: to find a legendary Inca city of gold

known as Paititi.

For centuries, legends of Paititi

have tempted hundreds of explorers to risk their lives

in the hope of being the first to locate the lost golden city.

But in almost 500 years of searching,

no one has found it.

Which begs the question, did Paititi even exist?

The lure of a lost gold city called Paititi has beckoned

many explorers and scholars over centuries now,

leading many to their death.

I don't think there's any reason to assume it doesn't exist.

We know that there are many sites

that remain to be discovered

hidden in this densely forested and jungled area,

In the vast wilderness of what was once occupied

by this Inca Empire.

If Paititi is, in fact, a real place,

as those who keep searching for it believe,

then where might it be hidden?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining

how the obsession with the legendary golden city started.

Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro

invade the Inca capital city Cajamarca

and capture Atahualpa, the Inca Emperor.

Atahualpa knew

that all the Spaniards wanted was gold.

And so he said, "I will give you a roomful of gold

and silver if you will let me go."

The gold came in bits and pieces,

Pizarro was impatient.

He killed Atahualpa before the entire ransom

had been delivered.

And those Inca who were still en route

bringing more of this gold headed for the hills.

With evidence everywhere for abundant gold,

Pizarro and the rest of the conquistadors concluded

that there must be a city somewhere,

what has become known as this golden city of Paititi.

And it started a quest that has eluded people,

but has attracted many, many expeditions

over centuries since.

If anyone understands the ongoing obsession

with Paititi, it is American explorer Greg Deyermenjian.

Greg has led more than 20 expeditions

into the depths of the Peruvian jungle

in what has become a very personal quest

to locate Paititi.

People that think I'm a masochist

for the ongoing pain and exhaustion

that, um, I feel on the expeditions,

'cause it's just so difficult and far

and remote and uncomfortable.

Even though, you know, this is

the most important thing in my life.

As far as how close we are to finding Paititi,

that's very difficult to be said.

Well, because there are so many unexplored areas

still hidden in the recesses of Peru.

The Peruvian rainforest stretches across

thousands of square miles.

An impenetrable sea of trees

waiting to swallow anyone brave enough,

or perhaps obsessed enough, to search for Paititi.

But Ceslav Cieslar believes

he finally has the key to finding the hidden city,

using images collected by satellites.

Could satellites allow Ceslav and his team to succeed

where so many others have failed?

Perhaps.

But one thing is certain.

Treasure hunters are not going to stop looking

for Paititi anytime soon.

Paititi resonates

within the human psyche

for two maybe connected but maybe separate reasons.

One is simply the age-old fact

that anything associated with gold,

be it in 1532

or 1650 or 2021,

that's always an attraction.

The other is there will always be some desire

for something that's mysterious, that's adventurous,

that's out there that's yet to be found,

that's yet to be documented, that's yet to be explained.

If the legend of Paititi is enough

to make people risk everything

to search for a lost city of gold,

then imagine the yearning of treasure hunters

who are looking for a vast cache of riches

protected by an unbreakable code.

This rural area is filled with rolling foothills,

patchy forests and quaint farms and cottages.

But there are those who believe that Bedford County

also holds the answer to a 200-year-old mystery.

The mystery of the Beale treasure.

Thomas J. Beale was an educated man

from here in the local area in the 1820s.

And him and a bunch of his buddies

went out west for an adventure.

They were young and rich and educated

and wanted to see the West.

Thomas Beale and his compatriots,

said to be up to 30 people, traveled first to St. Louis.

Then they traveled north into Colorado where they were said

to have found a deposit of gold and silver

which they worked for several months,

and then transported back to Virginia,

hiding it in a vault somewhere in Bedford County.

A hidden vault filled

with millions in gold and silver?

It's certainly an incredible story.

But that's not why we're still talking

about the Beale Treasure today.

The real reason why it has become

so famous and sought after is because of the ingenious way

Thomas Beale decided to hide his fortune.

No one really knows why Thomas Beale decided

to hide the treasure, but it could be because,

at the time this was found,

Colorado was still part of Spain,

and they would've,

if they would have been caught mining there,

it would have been a capital offense

and they would have gotten in a lot of trouble.

We do know Thomas Beale gave a box

to Robert Morriss in Lynchburg, Virginia,

who ran a boarding house there, in about 1822,

with instructions for him not to open it until 1832.

Beale goes, "I want you to, like, keep this for safekeeping,

"'cause I'll be back in about ten years, and if I'm not,

you're free to open it up and figure out what's going on."

But as the story goes, Thomas Beale never returned.

He disappeared and was never seen or heard from again.

So, naturally, Mr. Morriss began to wonder,

"What's in the box?"

About 20 years later, Mr. Morriss goes,

"Oh, yeah, that's right. It's been more than ten years.

I can open up this box."

Well, he opens up the box and there's three letters

that are all written in numbers.

So, it was, like, "12, 537, 16, 8."

Just a bunch of numbers.

And Mr. Morriss was like, "Okay,

I have no idea how to solve this."

Thomas Beale had written the three notes using a simple

but effective secret code that is known as a book cipher.

This technique replaces letters with numbers,

creating a code based on a secret source document.

But until you know what document the numbers correspond to,

it is impossible to decode the cipher

and reveal the secret message.

It was a type of encryption used a lot

during the Revolutionary War, and the numbers

would indicate line numbers and word numbers within, like,

a dictionary or a law manual or something like that.

It's fairly secure, provided that you keep

the identity of the book or source material secret.

Since no one knew what text Thomas Beale had used

as his cipher,

the three messages remained unsolved for decades.

That is, until 1885,

when a man named James B. Ward began selling a 50-cent pamphlet

which revealed that Beale had used a surprising document

as the cipher for the second message:

the Declaration of Independence.

What Thomas Beale had done

was he wrote a number under each word

of the Declaration of Independence in order.

So, starting at the first word: "1, 2, 3, 4, 5,"

all the way down to the 800s or the 900s.

And so, he took the "I" in the first word of the message,

and looked for a word starting with the letter I

in the Declaration of Independence.

And then he picked one of them, and looked at the number

that he had written underneath it

and used that number to stand for that letter I.

And so he continued to the next letter in his message,

wrote down the number associated with that word

and then continued along to create

this long sequence of numbers.

Apparently, what he had done was he encoded three messages,

one of which describe the contents of the treasure,

another describing its location

and then the third note, uh, describes

the owners of the treasure and t-their relatives.

Mr. Ward took the Declaration of Independence

and was able to compare that with the one letter

and he was able to figure out how that worked.

Mr. Ward was able to translate "I have deposited in the County

"of Bedford about four miles from Buford's, six feet below

"the surface of the ground, 1,014 pounds of gold,

"and 3,812 pounds of silver

deposited November 1819."

If the description of the contents of the vault,

if it's truthful,

the treasure is estimated to be worth

about $40 million in today's money.

So, obviously, that's a very compelling motivation

to find, uh, the solutions to the other ciphers.

THOMPSON The-the first letter which says

exactly where it's located has never been decoded.

So, which is one reason why people don't know

where exactly it's within those four miles.

One place that is located within the four-mile area

that Beale described is a farm

owned by a man named Danny Johnson.

Which is why, for decades,

people have been coming to his property

in search of the Beale treasure.

People from all over

the world have been here to find that treasure.

And every single one of them has a different idea

of where the treasure is buried.

And some people have dug without permission.

There's probably been, I don't know how many holes dug

right around me.

Every single one of them believes

that they have broken the code.

You've got generations of researchers that are coming

and looking for this gold and silver.

You're talking about a lot of money.

And I think that's why people are still looking for it.

Will the Beale treasure ever be found?

I guess that depends on whether or not

someone is able to decode the cipher.

But while solving a puzzle can be quite enticing,

often times, the strongest motivation

for finding hidden treasure is plain old greed.

In this suburban town

stands the Catherine Palace.

Originally built in the 18th century

as a summer home for the Russian royal family,

his palatial estate is one of the grandest,

most opulent residences in the world.

Each of its many rooms is considered a masterpiece

of Baroque design.

But there is one special room in this palace

that has become the center of a modern-day treasure hunt.

It's known as the Amber Room.

The Amber Room was built for Peter the Great

in Russia in the 18th century

as part of the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg.

There was gold, yes, there were jewels, yes,

but the main thing was amber.

Wherever you looked: amber.

It was like a, like a shrine to-to amber.

The Amber Room contains

well over a thousand pounds of amber.

You know, what amber actually is,

is petrified tree sap from pine trees.

Which is a very, very rare substance

which is measured by the carat.

In addition to the amber,

you have gemstones,

you have gold leaf gilding,

mirrors everywhere and candelabras.

And while the candelabras are lit,

you have these sparkling lights

shimmering off all of these different mirrors

and off of these gemstones and the amber itself,

which was, sort of glows under that light.

And it was, obviously, a-almost

a transcendent experience to go into the room,

and it instantly became the talk of the world

because it was dripping with opulence.

In the early 20th century,

many referred to the Amber room

as the Eighth Wonder of the World.

Its value has been estimated

to be over $500 million in today's dollars.

But it's hard to appraise

exactly how much it would be worth,

because the magnificent jewels

and panels of the Amber Room were stolen.

Adolf Hitler launches Operation Barbarossa,

the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

Within weeks, German troops lay siege

to the city of St. Petersburg.

But Hitler's goal isn't only to capture the Russian city.

He's also fixated on taking the Amber Room for himself.

The Nazis were obsessed with looting valuable stuff.

Artworks, you name it. Anything that was valuable.

So wherever they saw it-- And let's not forget,

they occupied many, many countries-- they took it.

The German commandos,

they knew exactly what they were doing,

and in a mere 36 hours,

pried these sheets of amber off the wall,

packaged it up into 27 crates,

and already had a destination in mind.

The Nazis put the 27 crates containing the Amber Room

on a train and shipped them to Konigsberg Castle in Germany.

The Amber Room was then put on display in the castle.

That is, until in August 1944...

when Allied forces advanced into Germany,

and the Nazis were forced to move the Amber Room yet again

to prevent it from being reclaimed by the Russians.

But no one knows for sure where they hid it.

For the Nazis, towards the end of the war,

when they knew their number was up, uh, basically,

all their looted artworks and treasures, uh, were dispersed.

And they were hidden down silver mines

or disused mines or caves.

That's the enduring mystery of the Amber Room.

Was this put on a train and sent into Germany?

Was it sent up into the Alps?

Was it sunk into a lake?

Wh-- Did it go into a salt mine?

There are a tantalizing number

of possible locations for what became of it.

Where did the Nazis hide the Amber Room?

And could that secret location be where it still is today,

more than 75 years later?

According to many researchers,

the best clue as to the whereabouts of the Amber Room

came from a Nazi war criminal named Erich Koch.

Erich Koch was Gauleiter of East Prussia.

Um, that's the sort of equivalent of governor

of that whole region.

And he was one of the most unyielding,

brutal of any of the Nazis.

He was the one who put the Amber Room

on display in the castle.

He also ordered it crated up to be saved

as the Soviets were approaching,

and was arrested as he was trying to get on a submarine

bound for South America,

and sentenced to death, only he was not executed.

And part of the reason he was not executed

is that he was perhaps the only person

who really knew what happened to the Amber Room.

In 1986, Erich Koch died

of natural causes in a Polish prison.

But according to eyewitness accounts,

before his death, Koch was seen leading Polish authorities

on a search for the Amber Room at a former Nazi military base

near the town of Mamerki, Poland,

which is located just 80 miles southeast of Konigsberg.

Based on the fact that you have eyewitnesses,

the most tantalizing new theory

is that the Amber Room is somehow hidden

in the former Nazi army headquarters

in Mamerki, in Poland.

This is an important site

where you have these massive cement bunker buildings.

So a very compelling argument could be made

that that's where the Amber Room is.

Is the Amber Room hidden

in the ruins of a Nazi base in Poland?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining

new evidence which suggests that beneath this facility,

there may be a secret network of tunnels deep underground.

In 1941,

Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union

and stole the magnificent jewels and panels of the Amber Room,

the so-called Eighth Wonder of the World.

But after Germany was defeated, the Amber Room

was never recovered, and since that time,

many have wondered where the Nazis hid the treasure.

In recent years, some researchers have suggested

that the Amber Room could possibly be hidden

beneath a former Nazi military base located in Mamerki, Poland.

- And on June 27, 2019,

a team of local researchers lifted a concrete slab

from the ground in the area of the base,

revealing a narrow, unexplored tunnel.

Some believe that this discovery suggests

that the base may, in fact, hold treasure stolen by the Nazis.

Historians don't know, actually,

how, uh, extensive this tunneling is.

I mean, you literally could have miles of this stuff.

So, of course, the speculation

is that maybe this is where the Amber Room is,

because it's only a couple hours' drive from Konigsberg.

You could easily have put those crates on a truck

and brought it to this Nazi facility.

Could underground tunnels below the Nazi base

be the true hiding place

of the priceless pieces of the Amber Room?

According to local historian Bartek Plebanczyk,

the answer is yes.

Bartek has spent years

exploring numerous tunnels that are already known

to connect more than 30 bunkers and fortifications

throughout the base.

It is his belief that in addition to these structures,

there may be a larger network of secret tunnels that lie

even deeper underground.

Because Bartek and his associates

have already found evidence of previously undiscovered tunnels

in the forest area near the base,

he is utilizing ground-penetrating radar

to gather more information about what lies below.

Will further investigation at Mamerki

reveal the lost Amber Room?

Perhaps.

But some researchers suggest

that the crates containing the Amber Room

aren't hidden beneath a decaying Nazi bunker,

but rather beneath the icy waters of the Baltic Sea,

inside the wreck of a German cargo ship

named the SS Karlsruhe.

A group of divers from a company called Baltictech

found the Karlsruhe wreck

at the bottom of the Baltic Sea in the fall of 2020.

The Karlsruhe is a really interesting case.

Konigsberg Castle was located on the shores of the Baltic Sea.

And so, it was well positioned for the evacuation

when the Red Army descended upon this area

and the Nazis knew that the gig was up.

If there was anything remaining in Konigsberg Castle

that had not yet been evacuated, it was going out on that ship.

The Karlsruhe was unfortunately sunk

by Soviet aircraft.

Fully laden, had about a thousand people on board,

and possibly with cargo including the 27 crates

containing the Amber Room.

Study is continuing to understand

exactly what is contained in this ship.

But there are many who are hopeful

that the 27 boxes containing the Amber Room

are among its hidden treasures.

We now recognize the importance of-of art,

uh, and artifacts to the identity of a nation,

that, um, to steal the art and artifacts of a nation

is to erase that culture.

So, I wish Russia the best

in getting that Amber Room back,

because of what it will mean to the people.

At the Catherine Palace outside St. Petersburg,

Russian craftsmen spent 24 years

reconstructing the Amber Room piece by piece.

Today the replica is open for public viewing.

And yet, that hasn't stopped treasure hunters from searching

for the original, which, for the time being, remains hidden.

But there's another treasure room, across the globe in India,

that, while its location is known,

people don't dare enter,

because this treasure is guarded by a deadly curse.

Heavily armed police officers patrol the entrance

to an ancient Hindu temple, the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple.

By order of India's Supreme Court,

officials begin unsealing six mysterious vaults

which have remained locked beneath the temple

for hundreds of years.

And when archaeologists examined the first five vaults,

they found untold billions in ancient treasure.

The government had to do an inventory of the vaults.

So they did go in and they documented everything

in several of the chambers.

One chamber was just for ornaments and jewelry,

another chamber was for jewels.

And there were sacks and sacks

of diamonds and rubies and emeralds.

There were thrones made of gold.

There was a 300-pound gold veil.

And there was a rope of gold chain that was 1,100 pounds.

And the reason there's so much money in this temple

is because of contributions and taxes, and that started

when the maharajas and the rulers started taxing

the lower caste system.

The total value of the treasure that was found

in the first five chambers

has been estimated to be worth as much as $22 billion.

But when officials attempted to open the door

to the sixth and final vault, they made a shocking discovery.

When it came to the sixth door, which they call Chamber B,

they were decorated with cobras.

This is a sign of danger, like a skull and crossbones.

That gives you a message:

do not enter, or enter on your own risk.

They are massive, huge cobras, and they can be very deadly.

This is a forbidden place.

A forbidden place?

While that may sound like a far-fetched notion,

many believe there is a very good reason

not to tamper with Vault B.

Because according to legend, it may be cursed.

You could not go beyond this point

because there are cobras, there are nagas.

Nagas are the mythical serpents in Hinduism.

And it has been said that when they sealed a door,

it was locked with what you call Naga Paasam Mantra.

It's-it's like a spell. Through the Naga's mantra,

it was locked.

Everyone is scared of the nagas,

and they are thinking that it may be cursed.

That is why, you know, people do not dare to open it.

It could cause many ugly consequences.

Based on what they've heard, the people all fear

that the world will end if that chamber is opened.

So they're really reticent about doing anything.

Whenever you hear a story that there is trillions

of dollars' worth of buried treasure,

people are always gonna want to know more.

This temple is not hidden. This temple is very public.

People know what's in it,

how much is in it, and what the value is.

And yet it's hidden to us.

We can't access it, we can't see it, we can't touch it.

So that's the real mystery.

Would you be willing to risk a deadly curse

to find a hidden treasure, huh?

Would the potential fortune be worth it,

or are some treasures not meant to be found?

Perhaps their ultimate value

lies in the mystery and wonder they inspire,

and our lives are richer when some things remain hidden

and unexplained.

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