Original subtitles

Tom ward (narrates): Forgotten, yet famous.

Empty, but iconic.

Five abandoned sites deep-routed in our popular culture.

An overgrown ruin in India

immortalised by world-renowned musicians...

What do the lads

from liverpool have to do with all this?

..A shattered compound in Columbia

linked to a criminal mastermind...

When you're the seventh richest man in the world,

you got to watch your back at all times.

..The launch pad

for a sporting superstar in Germany...

You can actually see the long jump pit

where one of the greatest American athletes

of all time trained.

..Disintegrating remains in Poland

where real-life heroes inspired Hollywood...

Looking around, it's very redolent of that movie

and this is actually the site that it was based on.

..And mythical strongholds in Romania,

home to a legendary villain.

All sorts of tall tales swirl around about these sites.

He was far more bloodthirsty and brutal

than his fictional counterpart.

..These five derelict locations set the stage for moments

that captured the world's imagination.

(Dramatic music)

Decaying relics...

Ruins of lost worlds...

Sites haunted by the past.

Their secrets waiting to be revealed.

(Dramatic music)

At the foot of the himalayas in northern India,

a far-out site once attracted

some of the world's most famous faces.

It could have been a resort,

but you can kind of tell that even when it was new,

it was pretty rough around the edges.

The deeper you go, the stranger things become.

Wherever you walk through the trees,

another unique structure pops up in front of you.

It's like some kind of magical land.

You're not quite sure what to expect next.

Sprouting from the forest floor

is a collection of small roundhouses.

There are these dome-like structures.

It's quite a jumble

and some of them even look like caves.

There are a lot of these small spaces

and there's not much there

to give you clues as to what these were used for.

Inside, there's hindi writing on the walls.

One clue is all this, kind of, spiritual graffiti.

This is not the normal world.

It's like you're entering into a whole different dimension.

There's a very relaxing feeling to the whole site.

It's a calm place to be.

But what was it for?

So, how did this decaying site in an Indian forest

come to play a vital role in western culture?

(Eerie beat)

Below this clifftop ruin

is one of the world's most sacred rivers, the Ganges.

(Traditional music)

Raju gosai knows this compound well.

This is a very spiritual place

with nice, beautiful setting and all.

This is a place where pilgrims from far and near come

and they take holy bath in the Ganges.

(Traditional music)

These structures sit high above the throng

of the legendary Indian city of rishikesh.

Rishikesh is a place

of considerable religious significance.

Pilgrims have been coming here for centuries.

This site is different.

People come here, were coming here for a very particular purpose.

If you want to understand

what this place was really all about,

it's those small domed cave-like structures

that are the real clues.

More than 100 domes hide in this forest.

Each one built from thousands of stones.

All the material for building this domes and other structure

are collected from river ganga.

All those stones used was from the...

Collected from the riverbank.

These crumbling structures

were once the height of spiritual luxury.

This place was created

by a famous Indian spiritual guru,

maharishi mahesh yogi in 1961.

The maharishi was known for developing his particular brand

of transcendental meditation.

And in 1955, he introduced that transcendental meditation

to India and the rest of the world.

The maharishi created this place

with western habits in mind.

This is the chaurasi kutia ashram.

An ashram is a centre of religious study.

The maharishi's ashram was a place that people came to study

and to meditate, to hear lecturers from him,

to get away from the pressures of daily life and the world.

It's quiet. It's calming.

It's private.

This is a place to meditate, to find peace,

to make inner explorations.

He created all the modern facilities

that was required for his student to learn,

his disciple to learn transcendental meditation.

This is a cluster of domes, you can say.

It only lacked a proper shower

and maharishi used to motivate people

to go and take bath in the Ganges.

When these meditation domes were built in 1970,

they were unrivalled in India.

But thanks to one of the biggest pop bands

in history, this now-forgotten ashram

become the most sought-after place on earth.

You round the corner and, suddenly,

there's a massive image of the Beatles.

What do the lads from liverpool have to do with all this?

(Upbeat music)

In 1968, the Beatles came here

and it was a worldwide media hype.

Also along for the ride was Mike love

from the beach boys, the singer Donovan,

the actress Mia farrow and her sister prudence,

and all sorts of other people.

This big entourage all showed up here.

George Harrison was really dedicated to transcendental meditation

and threw himself into it and he said, at one point,

"we have all the money you could dream of.

"We have all the fame you could wish for.

"But it isn't peace, is it?"

When the Beatles came here,

there were hardly any infrastructure here.

The owner, maharishi mahesh yogi,

made sure his esteemed guests got what they needed.

You know, the maharishi was no dummy

and he recognised that when the Beatles showed up,

this was the best thing that ever happened

to his movement.

We are at the Beatles bungalow.

These are some of the rooms where the Beatles used to stay.

The bungalows allotted to the Beatles were more spacious

and better equipped than those assigned

to the other students.

(Traditional music)

So, this place was known as rishikesh Hilton

because it had wall-to-wall carpet, it had curtains,

it had bunk beds with mattresses.

They had an attached toilet here with bathtubs.

And this is the room

where John Lennon and Cynthia Lennon used to stay.

John Lennon and Cynthia Lennon came here together

and they used to stay here, in one room.

But after a few days, John and Cynthia separated

and they used to live in another...

Different rooms.

The compound also had a post office.

John was often leaving his wife Cynthia

who was there with him to go down to the post office

and see if there'd been any new telegrams

from Yoko Ono, who he was beginning to become involved with.

Although there had been tensions in the band,

this site fuelled their creativity.

We are on the roof of the Beatles bungalow,

where the Beatles used to come and play music here.

The white album, many of the songs which they composed here.

Between hanging out with the maharishi and meditating,

they wrote roughly 40 songs in just seven weeks.

"Back in the ussr"

and "I'm so tired" were composed here.

The latter, apparently, by Lennon after he was suffering

from weeks of poor sleep at the ashram.

This is the room where prudence farrow used to stay

and which inspired the Beatles

to compose here one of the most memorable song,

"dear prudence".

Mia farrow's sister, prudence, spent so much time

in her room meditating

that people started to worry about her.

So, this period in the ashram

is linked to one of the most creative times

for the Beatles.

After the "fab four" returned to britain,

the ashram continued to flourish

thanks to the attention it had gained.

New meditation pods were built

to accommodate the tourists who flocked here.

The whole enterprise was resting on shaky foundations.

Maharishi mahesh yogi took this land from the forest department in 1961.

That lease expired in 1981.

And after that, the maharishi mahesh yogi foundation

made several attempts for the renewal of the lease,

but the process never got completed.

The former ashram fell into disrepair

as a result of vandalism and the encroachment

of the jungle.

(Traditional music)

Today, this atmospheric site

is controlled by the rajaji tiger reserve.

But it will always be synonymous with four lads from liverpool.

Intellectually, this site, these bungalows,

these strange halls, had a serious influence

on who the Beatles became as a band afterwards.

In Germany, west of Berlin, a unique complex

is linked to a seminal moment in sporting history.

Few Germans realised that the site even exists.

It's almost as if it's been forgotten on purpose.

A silent swimming pool awaits guests.

(Eerie beat)

A lone pommel horse sits in an empty gymnasium

and meadows stretch out in front of carefully positioned huts.

(Eerie beat)

Jan bejsovec is an expert on the history of this place.

This site really mirrors much of our past.

They have the beauty of youth on one side

and they have the tragedy of death on the other.

This complex dates back to 1934,

just one year after Adolf Hitler had become chancellor of Germany.

He understood the power of propaganda

and planned to use it

at the forthcoming Berlin olympic games.

Now, in 1936,

he has an opportunity to show to the world

a new and rebuilt, completely new kind of Germany.

This is the olympic village

for the 1936 Berlin games,

built to impress the 4,000 athletes

who would be flocking in from all over the globe.

People met here to celebrate their youth,

their physical strength.

These were the most elite sportsmen of their time.

Among them was the American Jessie Owens.

You can actually see the long jump pit

where Jessie Owens,

one of the greatest American athletes

of all time, trained.

This site had everything the foreign athletes needed

to ensure they sent favourable reports back home.

Here, we can clearly see how the Germans improved

by building an olympic village which nobody had seen so far.

It's not just having little houses for accommodation.

It's having real houses with a terrace for sunbathing,

with a central heating system inside,

and all the luxury of that period.

And all the people who were here in 1936 were really impressed by it.

The athletes could also watch their colleagues performing live

on the big screen.

The cinema rooms are a major breakthrough

in technology because here on this wall

was a TV set and was for the first time

in sports history, that you had a live broadcast.

The games videos were the first video games.

The first real propaganda games.

So, incorporating everything they had.

But outside of the luxurious olympic village,

the racial purification of Germany continued at pace.

While the Germans allowed Jews

to participate in the games, they were,

behind the scenes,

continuing to pass anti-semitic laws.

Meanwhile, in the olympic stadium,

an African-American athlete was about to make history.

Here, Jessie Owens took the first of four gold medals

from Hitler's Aryan athletes, humiliating the fuhrer.

Once the Olympics were over,

the village was handed to the German army.

After the war, it fell under Soviet control

until the ussr collapsed

and this site was left to disintegrate.

Now, the village is being re-purposed

into modern apartments.

But the events of the 1936 olympic games

leave an enduring legacy.

There are important lessons offered by a place like this.

One is that we can have

peaceful competition between nations,

even nations that are about to engage in terrible war.

But possibly the most important lesson is,

you shouldn't be betting on demonstrating white supremacy

when Jessie Owens is in the same room.

(Eerie beat)

In Romania,

the mystical carpathian mountains sit cloaked in legend.

You got these incredible valleys

with the rivers running along the bottom.

It is stunning, absolutely stunning.

Atop one forested peak is a blood-soaked cluster of ruins.

This is a proper fortress.

It looks impregnable,

but there's an incredible amount of damage as well.

It certainly looks like it had a dramatic downfall in the end.

Local folklore tells of a shadowy link

to another medieval castle nearby.

It has turrets. It has battlements.

It's every single fairytale that you've ever heard.

Every fairytale has its villain and this one's no exception.

All sorts of tall tales,

legends and rumours swirl around about these sites.

Some are old and some are new.

But what do we know for sure?

(Eerie beat)

The man who links these two castles is known the world over.

('Dracula' movie plays)

I am Dracula.

Dracula is one of the most famous villains

of all time.

It's a story that's been told over and over again

in various interpretations of what vampires are like.

(Long roll of thunder)

This is castello bran otherwise known

as the fabled Dracula's castle.

Matei petrisor has spent the past eight years

establishing what links this site

and the legendary "count" to the mysterious ruined fortress

in the mountains.

So, we are now in transylvania, the land of legend and mystery.

A place that will give you a perfect feeling

for the legend of Dracula hiding here in this castle,

in transylvania.

In this part of the world,

fear of vampires is a very common thing.

Transylvanians have been known to practice a ritual

that stops the dead from returning.

We go at the graveyard.

We dig into the tomb.

And then, after that, in order to make sure

that he will never come back again,

we have to cut the head with the silver dagger.

And then, we place the head between the legs

to make sure that he will never come and kill people in the village.

The local law fired author bram stoker's imagination.

When he describes the castle,

it's perfectly just like in the book,

up on the cliff, a little river nearby.

It's gothic.

It's got this haunted feeling about it.

It's the quintessential transylvanian castle.

But this wasn't the real Dracula's home.

(Eerie beat)

That accolade lies with the run-down hilltop citadel,

where a true-life Dracula did exist.

In fact, he was far more bloodthirsty

and brutal than his fictional counterpart.

Looking at it, you can see these incredible, strong walls

heading up from vertical cliffs.

Absolutely vertical.

And then, there's no easy way to get up there.

There's no defined road.

Just inaccessible.

This is poenari castle.

Historian nicolae ionescu has extensively studied

the defensive structures

which have stood here for nearly 1,000 years.

Nicolae (translation): "The tower behind us

"is the first part of the castle to be built.

"It was probably built in the 13th century.

"They chose this location to build a castle

"because of the close proximity to the road.

"In trading routes like this,

"castles were built to control borders and customs,

"where local rulers wanted to collect taxes from traders."

In the 15th century,

this site earned the blood-soaked reputation

that easily outstripped that of the fictional castle Dracula.

Poenari castle

lay in the medieval kingdom of wallachia, a buffer state

between the expanding ottoman empire and the kingdom of Hungary.

The castle sat on a flash point in the border lands.

And this site was the domain

of a wallachian prince, Vladislav III.

He had inherited his father's honourable title,

"order of the dragon".

In Romanian tradition,

the word "dracul" translates as dragon or devil.

So, for most Romanians, Dracula means the son of the devil.

Vladislav III became known as "vlad Dracula".

But it wasn't just the name that earned the real "count Dracula"

his notorious place in history.

Holed up in this hilltop fortress,

"vlad Dracula" was known far and wide

for his blood-curdling cruelty.

He earned the nickname "vlad the impaler"

or "vlad tepist" in the local tongue.

The stories of brutality litter his reign.

Within these walls,

Turks who refuse to remove their turbans,

had them nailed to their heads.

The local nobility was invited to a banquet

where vlad impaled them.

And rumours of cannibalism were rife.

As you can imagine though, such wholesale slaughter

didn't make vlad the most popular person

at the time.

His brutality was most often focused

on the marauding ottomans.

Translation: "His most iconic historical episode...

"Was when he seized a part of the ottoman army

"that was pursuing him and impaled them."

In some ways, vlad, the real person,

is a more terrifying figure than "count Dracula".

Images circulated at the time exaggerated vlad's appetite

for impaling and human flesh.

Wherever the truth lies,

vlad Dracula finally met his match...

When the ottoman sultan mehmed ii arrived at the gates.

So, 1462, we find Dracula fighting

against mehmed down in wallachia.

The capital was conquered and destroyed.

He was running up poenari, the fortress that he built.

But eventually, vlad was driven out of poenari castle

and he fled here to seek refuge

in what would later become known as Dracula's castle.

He hide here,

and then the spies of the Hungarian king find out

he's trying to run away using the secret passage

and they wait for him.

He was arrested at the exit from the tunnel.

It's believed he spent two months as a prisoner there,

rotting in the dungeons.

After his release,

vlad Dracula swiftly regained his lost territories,

but his reign was short-lived.

While marching to yet another battle with the ottomans,

vlad and a small vanguard of soldiers were ambushed

and vlad was killed.

His head was cut off and sent to the sultan as a trophy.

The name Dracula may be synonymous with the world's favourite villain,

but in his home country of Romania, Vladislav III is a national hero.

Translation: "Vlad the impaler was

"and always will remain in the Romanian conscience

"as a lover of truth and justice.

"Even though he used brutal methods,

"he tried to make the world a better place."

Here, he's admired as a leader who protected his merchants,

rid the land of thieves and stood up to oppressive empires.

Translation: "His courage to do so,

"that's what got him to remain

"in the Romanian national conscience."

Today, while "vlad Dracula's" real-life home lies abandoned,

tourists flock to the castle of his fictional counterpart.

Many movies were made of this character,

so, I do believe that this legend will never die.

(Eerie beat)

In guatape, Columbia, a battered waterside ruin

was once home to an infamous outlaw.

(Eerie beat)

It looks a little bit like a cross

between a playboy mansion and some kind of military fort.

Evidence of violence soon emerges in this sprawling, 20-acre site.

There is signs of some kind of enormous explosion.

So, this place clearly has a story to tell.

William jimenez once worked at this dilapidated compound.

William (translation): "It took almost seven years

"to build the structures that you can see here today."

It had a swimming pool, tennis courts, a football pitch,

none of which sound out of the ordinary,

but that football pitch doubled up as a helipad

and it also had its own private seaplane dock.

This place was anything but ordinary.

It's just 25 miles from the town of medellin...

Where the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar

founded his infamous cartel.

When you're Pablo Escobar, you can never really relax.

He was always surrounded by security.

This is hacienda la manuela, named after his only daughter.

Escobar built this luxury retreat to keep his family safe.

He had armed guards.

He had walls that were built like the walls of a fortress.

Escobar wanted to be ready for anything.

William remembers

the elusive drug baron's visits here.

Translation: "Pablo himself was here

"only two or three times maximum.

"He'd only spend a few hours here and then leave.

"He wouldn't even stay the night."

When you're the seventh richest man in the world,

you got to watch your back at all times.

Escobar had become a target not just for columbian authorities

and the us government, but also rival cartels.

And in 1993, devastation came to hacienda la manuela.

Some of Escobar's rivals managed to infiltrate the compound.

Translation: "What happened was that six more pick-ups

"and one Van came full of people.

"It was around midnight.

"They placed two bombs, one on that side

"and one on the other side.

"This was where they placed the biggest bomb.

"There was a huge explosion.

"You can imagine everything was shaking.

"In this area, there was a bathroom

"and that's where the bomb exploded upward

"and destroyed the walls around it.

"It was such a powerful explosion."

This bombing was kind of the beginning

of the end for Escobar.

Although Escobar survived the assassination attempt,

his luck would soon run out.

In December 1993,

Columbia's national police finally pinpointed

the gangster's whereabouts

and shot him dead as he tried to flee across medellin's rooftops.

Today, Escobar's complex legacy means

his once-glorious mansion lies abandoned.

(Eerie beat)

In the woods of western Poland,

an unassuming collection of ruins

saw a heroic endeavour immortalised by Hollywood.

You see some concrete vestiges of the past,

but it seems that the forest has reclaimed whatever was here.

So, at some point, years ago, this was cleared.

But why did somebody clear

a space in this forest?

You actually come across some concrete pillars in the ground.

They're clearly the constructs of something that's repeated,

something quite large.

Below-ground a series of passages seems to go nowhere.

And deeper in the words, a curious feature emerges.

On a pathway, you see this line of stones

with names inscribed on the stones.

Then, you arrive at the end

and there's a big stone and it says, "Harry."

Harry, here in the middle of a forest somewhere in Poland.

Quite the mystery.

Marek lazarz has scoured these woods to piece together

what went on here, back in the 1940s.

These are foundations of the theatre,

large, large theatre, 350 seats.

What you see here is orchestra pit,

stage, backstage and few rooms behind.

Surrounding it are the remnants of neatly built barrack buildings.

This was a military camp and in the 1940s,

this Polish wood was part of Nazi Germany.

It was known as stalag luft III.

"Stalag" is short for stammlager.

This is where they kept prisoners.

"Luft", because it was run by the luftwaffe.

And it housed various prisoners from the allied air forces.

From 1942,

it held more than 10,000 prisoners of war.

One of the biggest officer's camp for the army.

Risky allied air raids in the early years

of the second world war

resulted in many daredevil airmen

caught behind enemy lines.

Prisoner of war camps were filled

with brilliant, highly motivated officers and sergeants.

And these guys were able to make life miserable

for the German soldiers.

There was a code of honour among officers

that, in world war ii, that if you were captured,

you had to try to escape.

And it was clear that the German luftwaffe knew this.

This place was built in the heartland

of the German reich.

Even if you managed to get out of this camp,

you weren't going anywhere.

But that wasn't enough to stop the allied airmen

trying to get out.

This camp, surrounded by searchlight towers,

rows of barbed wire, machine guns and dogs,

meant there was only one way to do that, by tunnel.

But the Germans had that covered too.

They build the huts, the barracks, off the ground,

with a clearance beneath.

So, that it's harder to tunnel down.

Undeterred, a group of allied officers

led by squadron leader Roger bushell came up with a daring escape plan.

Bushell's idea is that you're going to build

three big tunnels nicknamed Tom, dick and Harry.

You're going to assume that the Germans

are going to discover one or two of them.

But with three, you'll all get out of the third one.

The hope was that one of these tunnels

would lead 200 men to freedom.

It would become the stuff of legend.

(Gunfire)

Give up your hopeless attempts to escape.

We're going to devote our energies

to sports and gardening, all the cultural pursuits.

Meanwhile, we dig.

This is the basis of the movie 'the great escape'

starring Steve McQueen, James garner,

Charles Bronson and other greats.

Man: They did manufacture.

(Dramatic music)

Remains on the site still hold traces

of the true-life escape,

including the most audacious tunnel, Harry.

We are now actually in the north compound,

where the hut 104 was.

Not much left except few pieces of the concrete.

And it was selected because it was almost

in the middle of the compound.

So, the Germans, they didn't suspect there would be any tunnelling.

Even so, the Germans still left gaps

under their accommodation,

so tunnelling could easily be spotted.

But there was a solution.

Inside all the huts,

solid stove bases stood between two rooms.

These plinths went down through the gap to the ground.

Two stoves were connected to the one chimney.

After they removed the stove from this place,

they used this area to build the entrance

and, kind of, fake floor was built using the same tiles

here to cover the entrance of the tunnel.

Harry would be dug nearly 10m below hut 104,

then travel more than 90m under two barbed wire fences

and exit at the tree line that bordered the camp.

At under 1m wide, the tunnel was tiny.

So, two larger staging areas were also incorporated.

These would aid the movement of escapees and house

some of its technical innovations.

The diggers moved into the tunnel

using a kind of underground railway and they were able to illuminate

by using lamps made with cooking fat scavenged

from the camp's own kitchens and from the prisoners own meals.

In order to ensure that people didn't asphyxiate in the tunnels,

fresh air was pumped in.

They used a gym bag as a set of bellows

to pump fresh air into the tunnel.

Dug with only improvised tools including cutlery,

even the earth they were excavating was hostile.

One of the reasons the Germans decided to camp here is,

the soil is very weak, very Sandy.

It's prone to collapse.

So, the tunnels were shored up with timber

that had been looted from around the camp.

The bunks, the bed boards,

the benches, the chairs,

they disassembled all this stuff

and they'd take it underground to shore up these tunnels.

And the soil at this site created a further problem.

Topsoil of the camp was actually dark grey.

Meanwhile, the dirt taken from the tunnels

was extremely bright and yellow.

So, you can see the top soil, which is dark grey,

but if you try to dig, you will find some yellow soil.

This could be soil dug out from the escape tunnel Harry.

You feel like you are touching history.

So, the inmates

would conceal soil inside their baggy,

second world war trousers

and they would walk out across the camp

and they would spread the soil from the tunnels,

so, that it wouldn't be noticeable to the Germans.

It's estimated they removed about 100 tonnes of material

with essentially, sort of, handmade tools.

Before long, every available area of the camp

was being used to dispose of the excavated soil,

even the theatre.

The theatre was selected by the prisoners

because there was a large, empty space

underneath the floor of the audience

and it was perfect place to hide tonnes of the soil.

Oh, my god! They found Tom.

But the tunnellers' luck would soon run out.

First, curious guards uncovered Tom and destroyed it with dynamite.

Then, dick was abandoned when the camp expanded

and covered its exit point.

Now, all hope rested on Harry.

But even that wouldn't last long.

They had to escape

because Germans were very close to find tunnel

and they had to make a decision.

"We have to escape as soon as possible."

The airmen knew that Harry wasn't quite ready.

A stone line running through the wood shows

the tunnel's path.

They actually break out through Harry in march 1944.

In reality, it was the tail end

of the coldest winter in European history.

It was freezing cold.

They get to the end of Harry and the hatch won't open,

'cause it's just frozen shut beneath a carapace of snow.

So, they're sitting there, they spend an hour and a half...

An hour and a half, trying to like knock this thing loose.

Another problem was that the tunnel was too short.

Hold onto yourself, bartlett. You're 20ft short.

The wall is right here on the opening.

The guard is between us and the lights.

So, it makes the escape very difficult.

By the time guards spotted the fleeing prisoners,

76 men had crawled their way to freedom.

Tragically, the majority were quickly rounded up.

When Hitler heard about the great escape,

he was absolutely furious.

And Hitler wanted to kill every airman

who escaped from stalag luft III.

Actually, only three of them successfully escaped to england.

73 were captured by the Germans and 50 of them

were executed by the gestapo.

The pows quiet determination,

spirit and resistance

were stirringly captured by Hollywood,

although with a bit of artistic licence.

You know, people would expect

that there are a lot of Americans involved

in this escape attempt because of, you know, the role

of Steve McQueen in the movie 'the great escape'.

But, in fact, all the Americans in the camp had been moved

to a different stalag before the escape attempt.

So, there are actually no Americans involved

in this "great escape".

Captioned by ai-media ai-media. TV