Original subtitles

Narrator: A ghostly house built for a brutal dictator.

This is clearly something that is out of place.

This is a very strange design and it doesn't really fit.

An incredible feat of engineering left to rust in the wilderness.

This huge metal tunnel floated in mid air

just sort of arches down the mountain,

disappears in to the trees, it looks like it goes on forever.

Towers and buildings clinging to a cliff face.

You've got the waves of the Atlantic ocean crashing beneath

and it's just like at any moment they could collapse

and just fall in to the water below.

And a mysterious abyss set deep in a fantasy landscape.

There are still questions about this place,

we don't have all the answers to, to the mysteries here.

Some are engineering marvels now abandoned,

others are ruins shrouded in mystery.

Within these decaying structures are the echoes of history.

Some are associated with dark times

but they also remind us of human ingenuity and endeavour.

Each haunted shell is ready to be unmasked

to tell it's own unique story.

On the Greek island of rhodes to the east of the mediterranean sea

is a wrecked and battered building.

It's a rather grand impressive mansion

but clearly has been abandoned or misused for a great many years.

It has been meticulously vandalised from top to bottom

in such a way and so purposefully

that it suggests that it was done with a real sense of aggression

or even hatred.

Set high above the towns and the coast below

the buildings look very different to those on the rest of the island.

This is an alpine lodge,

not something one would expect to see on a hot mediterranean island.

But it's not the only structure with an unfamiliar design.

Curiously next to the house itself is an abandoned hotel

with abandoned barracks

then off in the distance not too far away

is an abandoned village.

So, it's not an isolated case whatever happened here in this house

also happened in the surrounding area.

Hidden away in the woods

the building might seem neglected and forgotten

but it is actually evidence of a defining moment for rhodes

during the 1930s.

As local expert chorafitis eleftherios knows well.

It is really unique and it was build at a period of time

when there's still kind of a peaceful and romantic

er, mixture of cultures.

It's sad because this kind of thing

suddenly is going to change dramatically.

In a few years time everything is going to become darker.

Significantly rhodes is 500 miles from mainland Italy

and it sits within a group of islands known as the dodecanese.

For nearly 400 years they had been under the rule of the ottoman empire.

The strategic advantage that these islands afford

has been coveted for centuries

and come the 20th century that hasn't changed one bit.

In 1911 Italy would go to war with the ottoman empire

and some of the islands off the Turkish coast

are seized by the Italians and become Italian territory.

After the first world war,

the fascist government of bonito Mussolini

seized control of Italy

and began to settle Italian colonists on rhodes.

Built overlooking the island this is villa de vecchi,

the prized possession of the feared Italian governor of rhodes.

De vecchi actually was a very strict ruler,

he was a kind of a man that, he wanted to control everything,

he actually didn't allow the people to talk their own language,

he forced them to speak Italian

you know, all of our grandpas speak perfect Italian today.

Here we have this Italian fascist governor

and he's built his own personal palace and castle,

it's a monument to, to the vanity

of what is really a small time petty politician.

Born in 1884, cesare Maria de vecchi became a successful lawyer in turin

and sadly for rhodes an enthusiastic supporter

of the national fascist party.

He had previously been governor of Italian somaliland

before fate intervened to take him to a previously peaceful

mediterranean island.

Work on the villa actually began long before de vecchi arrived

but he would eventually leave his very personal Mark on the building.

It oozed luxury, very much a place for the elite.

Like every other part of the house

has been designed and made, constructed in Italy,

this specific wood for example the beech wood and the parquet

wasn't made in the north of Italy.

Materials, the designs everything completely Italian,

every detail, very luxurious.

It has to be somebody who was really number one

on the island alright and that means definitely a commander,

a very luxurious person, a very rich person or even a king.

This Italian influence was also seen in towns all across the island.

But the villa was the Jewel in the crown.

What this villa is saying

with this quintessential Italian design

is that this is now the new Italy, rhodes is really important to us

and it's part of our plans for the future.

With the dark shadow of the second world war

falling across Europe,

Mussolini made the fascist hardliner de vecchi governor of rhodes in 1936.

The ruthless new governor was now able to add his own

finishing touches to the villa project.

He was someone with an altogether more obsession about power,

more obsession about fascism,

more obsession about being a dictator

and we see that in the refined architecture

and the additions that he brought to the villa.

When you come to this point,

not only that you feel the absolutely lord

but you can see the whole of the coastline, Asia-minor,

the coastline of Turkey,

the north you see actually the city of rhodes.

If I was in his shoes I would feel like Zeus above Olympus,

you are the god of the gods and this is how he was feeling,

the commander, the absolute commander

he was above all the people, he was the god of them.

With war looming and with weaker countries vulnerable to attack,

Mussolini looked to extend Italian control further east,

rhodes became strategically vital to the plan.

Any empire requires forward operating platforms

staging posts and bases from which to consolidate,

command and control areas away from home

and for Mussolini, rhodes was to be that place

which would act as the area

to command the new eastern Roman empire.

This was not just another villa

and in fact it's part of a larger complex.

There is space for soldiers, there is space for visitors,

this is clearly a guarded environment,

this is somewhere where very senior people,

people like Mussolini could be.

You can see that there is a desire to make rhodes

into an important centre for the new Italian fascist empire.

De vecchi had firmly established

the terrible fascist grip on the island

but life on rhodes was about to become even worse.

The second world war quickly ended Italian dreams of a new Roman empire.

The heady early triumphs of the war became a distant memory

as a series of catastrophic defeats saw Italy forced to sue for peace.

In September 1943

the armistice of cassibile was signed by Italy and the allies

a condition of which was Italy's formal surrender.

Within a month Italy formerly declared war on Germany

her former ally.

Hitler had long since lost faith in Mussolini and Italy

when the surrender came Germany snapped into action.

One of the targets for Nazi retribution was rhodes

which was soon seized by the Germany army.

Under the Nazis the amount of war crimes,

atrocities, brutality

that the Nazi's would visit on the Greek islands

is, pretty horrendous.

They murdered, they executed, they tortured

just to make it really clear we are in charge now.

Following the war the villa was kept ready for the arrival of new vips.

But no-one ever came.

In 1955 it was abandoned for good.

While Mussolini never set foot here

and de vecchi had long left the island,

to the people of rhodes the villa was a symbolic reminder

of the violent years of oppression it suffered as a result.

Pretty much as soon as the villa falls into disuse,

the people take revenge,

they deface it, they try to humiliate it,

it's their way of getting a piece back

at those who had oppressed them.

In the thick forests of West Virginia usa,

deep in the appalachian mountains,

a river snakes through the formidable new river gorge.

You're deep in what feels like a jungle or tropical forest

and you're heading in to the middle of nowhere.

And as you go through the trees you see these bits of rusting iron,

there seems to be a scattering of abandoned machinery.

And then scattered amongst all of this machinery

are foundations of buildings suggesting that once

there must have been some kind of community there.

As you travel deeper all together stranger objects begin to appear.

One of the most impressive sites in the gorge

is almost hidden by trees, you have to get up close to it

and then you realise there's this massive structure

going up the side of the gorge.

This huge metal tunnel floated in mid air

just sort of arches down the mountain,

disappears into the trees, it looks like it goes on forever.

What is this bizarre contraption?

The answer is linked to a giant of industry and his stubborn obsession.

The tale begins in the mid 19th century england

and with a man of extraordinary ambition

who was driven by dreams of america.

His name was John nuttall.

The story of John nuttall is a classic example

of an ambitious young man

who from the age of 11 was working in the mines,

saves his money and leaves england to seek his fame and fortune

in the promise land.

Tragedy soon struck after nuttall arrived on American soil

when his wife died

leaving him to care for their three young children alone.

Yet his ambition remained undimmed

and one night he spotted something that would change his life.

Whilst staying in a tavern John nuttall noticed

that they were using a particular kind of high grade smokeless coal.

Then he discovers that the railways are going to be coming through

and he says you know what there's a fortune to be made here.

At $1 an acre,

nuttall snapped up as much of this rugged mountainside as he could.

When the chesapeake and Ohio railway line

that ran through the gorge was completed in 1873,

John nuttall and the town were ready and waiting.

This is nuttallburg,

it's birth heralded an era of transformation and change.

For millennia the new river gorge was a wild natural area

and then coal was discovered

and turned into this booming industrial zone

with rail lines, coal trains rumbling through,

mines operating day and night,

towns growing up, up and down the gorge.

But what made new river coal so easy to access?

The river course cuts through the appalachian mountains

such that it can only have been there

before the mountains themselves Rose.

The river's cut down through all of geology

and in doing so it's actually exposed

four very nicely preserved coal scenes

which makes it also easy to get at.

Easy to access perhaps but gruelling work for the miners.

This particular layer of coal was actually very shallow,

just 3.5 feet deep

and so the conditions for the miners was actually really dangerous.

The miners were often just lying horizontally on the ground

just chipping away at the coal

and the deeper they got the more danger there was

because the ceiling essentially was becoming more and more fragile.

And if there was a collapse they had no way of getting out.

It was a perilous business

but highly profitable

and although hard to imagine now,

by the time of nuttall's death in 1897

the town had developed into a vibrant and diverse community.

Nuttallburg was the most productive mine in the gorge for a time

and as such it attracted workers from all over the world,

you had Italian Americans, eastern Europeans,

African Americans, all working in this area

and in many cases buying land and building homes.

Their lives were about to change, a famous pioneer was set to arrive

to put his own unique stamp on the town,

bringing with him national attention.

Set among the thick forests of the new river gorge,

is an extraordinary tunnel of steel

that appears to almost float up the mountain.

It's creator was none other than the famous Henry Ford

who arrived here in 1920.

When Henry Ford bought up nuttallburg,

the reaction it was largely dismissive,

in fact one of the local journalists

sarcastically wrote that he would have been better off

using the old workings he had just acquired for storing auto parts

as opposed to mining.

Some believe that the rich seams of coal

were largely exhausted but Ford thought otherwise.

He was determined to get the coal from the seam,

hundreds of feet above the river corridor

down to the railway below in a faster more efficient way.

The coal was extremely friable or brittle

and so it had to be handled with care

so Henry Ford built this conveyor belt

to transport it down to the river

and that conveyor belt was one of the longest in the world.

It became the beating heart of the town.

As park ranger David fuerst explains.

This is the most prominent feature in the town,

it's the conveyor system which is the heart of the, of nuttallburg

and as you look up the hill here

you can see it runs 1,400 feet down from the mine portal which is above,

down to the tipple

and the way to operate it was it carried the coal down a chute

using what's called a rope and button system

which was a very advanced technology of that time.

This rope and button conveyor belt was part of a cutting edge process.

Loaded coal cars left the mine and entered the head house,

where the coal was transferred to the conveyor.

Then the brittle was transported down hill slowly and gently

to avoid any risk of damage.

At the bottom was the tipple

where the coal was sorted and loaded into waiting rail carts.

This efficient system enabled 125 tonnes of coal

to be moved every single hour.

So why did Henry fords high tech venture come to an end?

At this time Henry fords plant in deerbourne

was turning out model t cars at a terrific rate,

it took a terrific amount of energy

to run what at the time was one of the largest

mechanised production facilities ever built.

Ford wanted to control the supply of that energy,

the fuel that would power his factories.

Henry Ford wants to control every aspect of the car making process

whether that was the rubber for tyres,

the steel for the bodywork and even the coal for powering the factories.

The plan to control every stage of production

was known as vertical integration but Ford faced one crucial obstacle.

Bought the mine

but he couldn't afford to buy the railroad

and the railroad was what he needed to get the coal

to his plant in deerbourne Michigan

if he couldn't predict exactly when the deliveries were going to come,

if he couldn't control the price,

he realised that controlling the mine

really didn't help him that much.

Once Ford realised he could neither control nor buy the railways

he swiftly abandoned nuttallburg selling up in 1928.

The mine finally closed for good in 1958

and the last of the residents of nuttallburg moved away,

they left their homes and the forest

and the vegetation began to creep back in and take over once again.

Today the national park service

is engaged in a constant battle with nature

to prevent it from re-claiming nuttallburg's industrial heritage.

The new river gorge has returned to being a near wilderness,

most of the visitors are people coming to enjoy wild nature,

rock climbing and white water rafting and the mines are silent.

Near the west coast of Portugal, high in the hills of sintra

is a beguiling combination of structures

set within a fantastical landscape.

The site's a little creepy

and the thing about it is that everything is hidden.

The gardens are large and lush

but when you start walking around them

things seem a little strange.

The entire place is like a labyrinth,

you could go off this direction, you could go off that direction.

There's too many options for you to logically sort of figure out.

At the centre of it all is a building like nothing else.

It looks like some kind of mythological entry

to the gates of hell or the centre of the world.

It just feels powerful, it feels purposeful

and you just want to descend.

You want to find out what's down there.

But as you start that journey it's absolutely not clear

where it's going.

So there are still questions about this place,

we don't have all the answers to, to the mysteries here.

Growing in the shadows of the enchanting mansion

of quinta da regaleria

the gardens seem to live a life of their own

in a world full of secrets and surprises.

When we walk in the garden

we are going to see lots of contrasts

between darkness and light,

the green of nature and the dark stone.

It seems like a labyrinth,

not only the, the exterior but also the tunnel.

So where does this maze end

and for what purpose was the garden built?

And as local guide matilde almesh knows with this place

there's always more than meets the eye.

There's always something new to, to discover,

a surprise in every corner.

A cave or a tunnel or something dark that I didn't see before.

There's pathways that lead to nowhere,

you turn the corner there's a huge tower,

the whole thing feels very surreal

as though it's a dream sequence from a movie.

The theatrical elements of the environment were quite deliberate,

everything here came straight from the imagination

of the sites two creators who both had something to prove.

It was built by a wealthy man called Antonio Augusto carvalho monterio.

Carvalho monterio was the heir of a huge fortune.

Monterio worked with an Italian architect

and stage designer named Luigi manini,

well manini must have felt like this was the ultimate,

he had a client with unlimited amounts of money

who wanted to build some of the craziest most fanciful,

most delightful stuff ever created.

The vision of these two men came to life with the completion

of this curious masterpiece in 1910.

The result was something entirely unique.

You see a, a promenade of statues, of Greek and Roman gods,

you see a chapel,

you see a waterfall with stepping stones,

every where you turn you see a different fantastical element

borrowed from history with no real rhyme or reason

for how it all hangs together.

Dramatic, baffling and intriguing in equal measure,

the route continues towards an unusual rock structure

which perhaps reveals the site's true purpose.

It's known as the initiation well.

The well, it's almost like an optical illusion,

it's like looking at a medieval tower in reverse,

instead of rising up into the sky,

it's a staircase it spirals down into the earth.

This spiralling descent into darkness

is all part of a captivating journey

but to where?

We are at the top of this structure

and we need to go down the nine levels

and the idea is for us to find the darkness down there.

You don't really know what you are going to find down there,

you don't know if you need to go up or if you have an exit.

This is a test to make you feel the right way,

to make you listen to your instincts, listen to yourself.

Part of the really interesting symbolism

is the fact that there's nine levels to the initiation well,

the journey itself

and then number nine is reminiscent of Dante's inferno,

of Dante's hell,

so it's almost a symbolic journey to hell and back.

The mixed symbols and references

do little to explain any overall meaning

but there's one sign that might well unlock the mystery.

Ok so we enter down the nine circles into the darkness

and we find a clue here on the floor.

At first it seems an eight pointed star but it is a compass.

As you continue to look at the compass

another major shape jumps out at you,

it's a large cross.

We believe it is a knights templar's cross

and this can be related to some initiation rights

or the idea of initiation rituals.

The knights templar were a powerful religious order

in the middle ages

known for their secret initiation ceremonies.

For 200 years in the medieval period

the knights templar

were the leading catholic military and religious order

they were the spear head of the crusades

but ever since people have wondered

whether there was something unusual about them,

whether there was something esoteric about them.

So was this all connected to the rituals of the templar order?

Or was it associated with another mysterious group.

It seems as if monterio and manini

they wanted their visitors to rely on their senses

as you walk through the tunnel you can't really see anything

so you have to use your hearing to, to direct you.

Initiation usually involves journey

and if you go back to some of the earliest initiatory cults

there were physical journeys through tunnels

into different spaces with different experiences.

And here one gets the sense that a similar journey

might be being laid out for the visitor.

Any visitor brave enough to venture toward the sound of the water

is eventually rewarded by coming out in this lovely garden scene

with it's waterfall.

While a personal journey of self discovery and enlightenment

seems to have all been part of montero's plan

if it was also meant for an initiation ceremony

then into which group isn't clear.

Everywhere you look there's this wild mishmash of symbolism,

you have pagan symbols, tarot,

you have symbols that are associated with the knights templar,

even Greek and Roman gods.

But finally as the journey through the garden draws to a close,

the overall answers seem to be becoming a little clearer.

So you find yourself at the end in this chapel,

this apparent house of god and you think alright this is it.

This is where I'm supposed to finish my journey.

It's all about god.

This is not, no ordinary chapel.

It's full of symbols that can have different meanings.

One of the symbols you notice right away is the all seeing eye

now of course that's an masonic symbol

that says the eye of god is always watching.

But like most things in this intriguing place,

everything is open to interpretation.

The ropes around it reference to the free masonry

or a reference to the Portuguese discoveries in the 16th century

representing the vessels.

So while the free masons

are known for their bizarre initiation ceremonies

and their use of the rope or tow line symbol

perhaps the more obvious use for ropes

could be a better clue for what monteiro really intended.

It may of course have nothing to do with initiation at all.

At the time it was built Portugal was going through many changes,

those could have been felt as very instable times

by someone like the builder of this place

and he may well have been trying to hark back to a time

when things felt a little more certain,

when Portugal was a stronger more international country,

this may simply be a reaffirmation of the solidity of the Portugal

he remembered rather than anything remotely arcane.

Following the assassination of the Portuguese king in 1908

the old order began to crumble.

For the aging wealthy monarchist monteiro

perhaps this place was his own elaborate

but private tribute to a lost world.

He tried to represent here his ideals his beliefs

that is why when we walk around the garden

and we, when we visit the chapel and the palace

it's like to take a glimpse in to carvalho monteiro's mind.

Following monteiro's death in 1920 the house and gardens were sold

and the initiation well was forgotten about

for the next 75 years.

This appears to be an initiation centre but guess what?

We might be wrong.

Monteiro, he never wrote it down

but what we do know it's real purpose he's taken it to the grave.

Along the rugged coastline of cornwall in south west england

are a number of extraordinary sites.

It's an abandoned isolated

but quite beautiful scene of these derelict buildings

on top of these high craggy cliffs

with the vast crashing waves down below.

From beneath the lush green hills above,

man made structures emerge from the craggy rock face.

It's all a bit dramatic, you've got these,

these big structures precariously balanced on this cliff top,

you've got the waves of the Atlantic ocean crashing beneath

and it's just like at any time

these structures could fall into the sea.

It's a startling and quite a dramatic juxtaposition

between this ruling gentle, calming poldark countryside just inland

and then this rough violent industrial scene.

A mixture of towers and strange ruins litter the hilltops.

The buildings themselves look so precarious

on the edge of the cliffs.

I mean, you really wonder why would you need them to be there,

they're not lighthouses.

So were they getting something from the sea?

What was the reason for them being so close on the water's edge?

These structures look defiantly over the Atlantic ocean.

But the peace and tranquillity today

is in stark contrast to what went on here centuries ago.

This was once at the centre of cornwall's rich mining heritage.

Working in these mines would have just been an assault on the senses,

it's a cacophony of noises.

This would have been victorian industry at it's most intense

the noise of the stamps crushing the tin ore,

of the vast chains hauling the carts,

this was an extraordinary industrial hive of activity.

The remnants of powerful machinery inside crumbling stone towers

are reminders of a mighty industrial past.

This is botallack and levant,

two neighbouring mines on cornwall's wild tin coast,

the site of tin and copper mining since Roman times.

However these are no ordinary mines.

What I love about these structures is they give a glorious window

into an incredible feat of victorian engineering.

But why were they built on the cliff precipice?

And what catastrophe has bought them crashing down to earth?

By the mid 1700s,

these two mines had established themselves firmly

on the tin and copper mining map

but they weren't just typical mine shafts.

As Charlotte tomlinson of the national trust explains.

This shaft is where the skips came up

so it's about 2,000 feet down,

and then it does go out under the sea by about a kilometre as well.

What's incredible about these mines is they weren't mining land,

they were mining under the sea.

And half a mile out at sea.

These are submarine mines that follow seams of precious minerals

out under the seabed.

So the way these mines worked

was you would start by digging vertically

and you'd dig down in a mine shaft

and then you'd start digging horizontally

and you'd just keep on digging.

But obviously these places were full of water

and that's where the beam engine came in

'cause it would pump the water out so you could access the rock face.

Beam engines were designed and developed in the early 1700s

specifically to remove flood water from cornwall's deep water mines.

A form of steam engine an overhead beam pivoted up and down

applying force from a vertical position.

The driving motion of the piston powered a water pump

using a combination of steam and atmospheric pressure.

The miners were then able to continue their very dangerous work.

And so you could imagine you know, particularly in the early days

they're just using you know, sheer brute force

to break the rocks open with, with pick axes and erm,

and a bit later with dynamite you know, going deep down

but then going out with sea above you

that's a really dangerous and precarious thing to do.

Dangerous for the miners then but the high market value of tin

ensured healthy profits for the mine owners.

The value of tin at the time

meant that more risks were being taken,

people would go to further and further lengths

to be able to extract that metal.

And that meant pushing further and further out to sea.

Now remember this is back in the 18th century

we don't have the mechanical air drills,

we, we don't have the tunnelling machines,

these are people working by hand with chisel, hammers and gunpowder.

For the miners, every day meant descending into the depths

and saying their prayers.

This was very dangerous work and long before health and safety,

the human casualty toll was high not only from the natural dangers

falling rocks, injuries, disasters, accidents

but also the long term effects of working in such toxic environments.

It was dark, dirty and hot

and the effects of their health of working underground

were, were bad and they had very short life spans,

they didn't really live past 30 quite often,

that was the usual life expectancy of a miner.

In the early 1800s a pumping engine was set up at the base of the cliffs,

those in the mines worked feverishly to produce tin, copper and arsenic.

They included hundreds of women and children.

Botallack alone dumped a staggering

1.5 million tonnes of waste into the sea

dying it a distinctive red colour.

As the industrial revolution soared ahead in the mid 19th century

new technology was introduced to increase production even further.

In 1865 botallack became the focus of national attention.

At botallack they installed a new winding engine

and it was so cutting edge and so innovative

that the prince of wales and his wife,

the future king Edward vii and queen Alexandria came to visit

and they went down the shaft in the winding engine,

this became such a topic of note and such a tourist attraction

that the mine was even able to charge visitors a Guinea

to come in and look around.

This new technology vastly increased the efficiency and speed

at which men could be moved in and out of the mine shafts

but dark days lay ahead.

In the late 19th century falling tin and copper prices

hit the region hard,

most of the mines closed, including botallack which fell silent in 1895.

Then in 1919 disaster struck levant

when the engine that powered men up and down the main shaft gave way.

A link between the rod and the engine snapped

sending 31 men plummeting to their deaths

at the bottom of the shaft

and that led to the eventual decline of the mine

from which it never recovered.

In 1930 levant was finally abandoned.

Today botallack is a world heritage site

and while the age of tin is over,

the beam engine at levant has been lovingly restored

and tourists can now see this mighty machine in action once again.

I think levant as a site is unique

because it's got the working beam engine

and in it's original place,

essentially it could be doing the job that it was doing

you know, 178 years ago and they can see that working and in action.

Now they lie abandoned

but once they were at the cutting edge of engineering.

There are echoes of history in these decaying structures.

They remind us of terror and war

but also of great innovation and human endeavour.

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