Original subtitles

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] Florence,

a city of intrigue

and inspiration.

And at its heart,

a museum with secrets dark and strange.

A fight to the death,

an alchemist's dream,

and a crypt that conceals a lost soul.

Secrets hidden in plain sight inside the Uffizi Gallery.

(suspenseful music)

In the city of Florence, Italy,

birthplace of the Renaissance, stands a former palace

that is now one of the most popular museums in the world.

The Uffizi is filled with works of genius by Michelangelo,

Botticelli, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Today, tourists stroll through its galleries

and in the streets beyond in perfect safety.

But in the 15th century,

Florence was rife with intrigue and murder.

So turbulent was this period that it recently inspired

a hugely popular video game called Assassin's Creed.

In this action-adventure game, players may be attacked

by agents of the Pope, or a daring noble,

or a wealthy citizen.

The game takes license with history

but not much.

This was a real daring noble.

The Duke of Urbino had himself painted in left profile

because he lost his right eye while jousting.

This was a real wealthy citizen.

Lorenzo de' Medici, the head of a powerful family

who controlled Florence like a mafia don.

In Assassin's Creed, the Medici family is under threat.

The conspiracy was real.

- The Pazzi conspiracy is actually

a really complicated affair.

It really is something right out of the Godfather movies

where we have a Florentine family by the name of Pazzi,

which actually gave name to the conspiracy itself.

They're the eternal number twos in Florence

during the 15th century.

They kind of rode the coattails of the Medici family.

The Pazzi would not be satisfied

with that number two position and I think that the Pazzi,

at this point, kind of see a window, if you will,

a way that they can actually now oust,

bump the Medici out of power and perhaps step in themselves

as the leading family in the city of Florence.

- [Narrator] In this cathedral on Sunday, April 26, 1478,

the Pazzis lay in wait for Lorenzo de' Medici

and his brother, Giuliano.

- Giuliano walks in, from what we know,

presumably makes his way down the nave of the church,

trying to get closer to his brother Lorenzo.

Lorenzo goes down towards the southern end of the church

there at the altar and as more time passes,

all of the conspirators are becoming a bit nervous

and they kind of jump the gun, if you will.

Instead of waiting until Giuliano

is in the vicinity of his brother,

Francesco de' Pazzi, who seems to be the most impassioned

of all the conspirators, decides that it's now or never.

He pulls his dagger

and he begins to violently inflict wounds on the person

of Giuliano de' Medici.

- [Narrator] He is stabbed 19 times.

- While this is happening, while Giuliano himself

is being savagely murdered over there by Porto de Servi,

Lorenzo, instead, finds himself in this part

of the cathedral.

We're down towards the southern side,

very close to the high altar.

- [Narrator] Here, two more assassins attack.

- They grab Lorenzo and turn him around

in an attempt to actually get a clear shot at him.

But it was enough to warn Lorenzo, who draws his own weapon.

- [Narrator] The Pazzis wounded him twice

but he escaped through these doors to safety.

Lorenzo lived on and history records

that the Pazzi family conspired alone

but the real truth is a museum secret.

Historian Marcello Simonetta has been investigating

the Pazzi conspiracy for decades.

He was also an advisor for the Assassin's Creed video game.

- I had a lot of fun playing with the writers

trying to prevent them from doing egregious mistakes

but also giving them more detail.

(ominous music)

- [Narrator] During his research,

Marcello discovered a letter sent to Popes Sixtus IV

shortly before the attack.

Some historians suspect that the Pope

supported the Pazzi conspiracy

but the letter shed no light on the matter

because it was encrypted.

- Nothing in it could be read unless one broke the code.

- [Narrator] In the same archive were unencrypted letters

to one of Marcello Simonetta's own ancestors.

- I found a lot of letters and particularly

there were some letters from Federico de Montefeltro,

Duke of Urbino, to my ancestor, Chico Simonetta.

These letters were very curious.

- [Narrator] The Duke wrote that on the day of the attack

soldiers had been seen outside the city.

But he dismissed the reports as unfounded.

- I got a bit suspicious about this

and slowly I realized that some military operation

had to be ongoing in order for the whole conspiracy

to be achieved.

- [Narrator] But there were no reports

of soldiers in Florence during the attack or afterwards

when the Pazzis were captured by a mob.

- This is where the the plotters were hanged

outside of the windows and then their bodies were dropped

on the floor of the square and the bodies were dragged

around the city for days by the citizens of Florence

outraged by the attack against the Medici.

- [Narrator] It's starting to look like the Pazzis

did act on their own.

But there is still that encrypted letter.

- At that point, I remembered that my ancestor,

Chico Simonetta, had written a treatise on how to decode

intercepted letters from enemies.

- [Narrator] The code represents some words

as letter/number combinations.

- And so I started using this code-breaking tips

and slowly I managed to break the code.

- [Narrator] The message assured the Pope

that the attack on the Medicis

would be backed up by soldiers.

- While the attack on the Medici brothers was ongoing,

military forces that surrounded the city

were ready to come in and seize it.

- [Narrator] But when the attack in the cathedral failed,

everything changed.

- They were ready to come in but they never did.

They simply had to hide away.

- [Narrator] Below the message is the signature

of the one-eyed Duke of Urbino.

- The Pope Sextus IV and the Duke of Urbino

had been organizing the military operation

to seize the city of Florence and destroy completely

the power of the Medici.

- [Narrator] It was the kind of backstabbing move

you might expect in Assassin's Creed.

But in the mean streets of 15th century Florence,

the game was real.

Next on Museum Secrets, a lost and ancient martial art.

(light jovial music)

In Florence, Italy, inside the Uffizi,

there are galleries filled with beautiful women

and equally beautiful men.

Some are gods, some are demons,

and some are tough guys.

This is one of the most familiar statues in the world.

It is known simply as The Wrestlers.

And that makes sense because these men are Greeks.

And the ancient Greeks invented the sport of wrestling.

Wrestlers were the stars of the first Olympic games.

Their holds and rules are familiar

to amateur wrestlers today.

But this story isn't about wrestling

because that's not what these men are doing.

The martial art depicted in this statue is a museum secret.

Our investigation begins at a training facility

of the Italian Army where elite paratroopers

prepare for hand-to-hand combat under the watchful eye

of Aris Makris.

Aris hails from Montreal, Canada,

the son of Greek immigrants.

As a boy, he became obsessed with karate.

- I slept, ate, drank, breathed martial arts

since the age of nine.

- [Narrator] Many disciplines have Asian names like judo,

jujitsu, taekwondo.

Aris tried them all.

But then he stumbled upon a martial art

that had a Greek name, pankration.

- That's what sparked my interest as a young boy,

as a young Greek boy, as a young Greek Spartan boy,

growing up in a Greek community and very bitten

by the martial art bug, to actually find out more about it.

- [Narrator] Aris discovered that in the Greek myth

of the labyrinth, the hero used pankration

to defeat the Minotaur.

(Minotaur roaring)

In the real world, Alexander the Great ordered his men

to master it.

But over the centuries, pankration became a lost art

surviving only in ancient images.

- I found the images very intriguing.

I mean, it almost connected certain dots for me

because many of the different martial arts I was doing

did have similar techniques.

I need to control the upper ground all the time,

no matter what.

- [Narrator] Now Aris travels the world

introducing Pankration to modern warriors

like these Italian paratroopers.

- A lot of militaries,

especially the ones that I've worked with around the world,

they're trying to adapt to a pankration style,

type of martial art because it provides something

that is complete.

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] On the ground, pankration looks like wrestling

but when opponents stand up,

it's more like bare-knuckle boxing with karate kicks.

So far, these trainees have been pulling their punches

but that's about to change.

- You work your way up, now you start up slow.

- Later we throw in a punch?

- The punches and then you throw everything in.

- Yeah.

(dramatic music)

- Beautiful job, very beautiful work, excellent work.

- [Narrator] That was a real fight but believe it or not,

they were still holding back.

(audience cheering loudly)

There are some pankration moves that were only used

in ancient times.

- Finger breaks, small joint breaks, eye gouging,

biting, and a tap on the back of the cervical spine,

the groin area, from wrestling to striking to kicking,

I mean, and that's what pankration means.

Pankratos, pankration means all powers,

all encompassing powers, everything involved.

- [Narrator] In pankration, anything goes.

And that brings us back to the statue called The Wrestlers.

- That is the father of all sculptures.

That represents pankration to the T.

That is clearly pankration.

- [Narrator] Aris intends to prove his theory

with the help of two volunteers.

- Okay, so now this leg will go on the inside.

Oh, that's the hook exactly.

This way the guy is locked in.

- [Narrator] He arranges their positions

to mirror the sculpture precisely.

- And this leg over here's got to be out.

That's it.

The guy on top, although he is locked in,

in a perfect lock, single-leg hook inside,

to make sure that he can hook himself

and attach himself to the other guy's body,

the other leg stretched out on the side

to give him more like a tripod position.

- [Narrator] The stance may come from wrestling

but one detail does not.

- What changes this from being a wrestling move

into a pankration move is the fact that he's got his hand

up in the air in a striking position.

His fist is closed.

He sees you punching in the face so he turns that way.

That's right, see.

Now, if it was a strictly wrestling position,

he would have his head tucked down

and this way we know that he's not going,

he's going to try to avoid the guy

from actually going in on him, or going around his neck.

Only he knows he's going to take a punch.

He'd rather give the back of his head as opposed to his face

or the side of his head is his temple.

The fist and the turning of the guy's head

combined with the locking of the two bodies together

is the ultimate description or example of pankration.

- [Narrator] As this ancient martial art

emerges from obscurity, perhaps the Uffizi's sculpture

will become known by its true name, The Pankration Fighters.

(dramatic music)

Next on Museum Secrets, the artist who lost his head.

(dramatic orchestral music)

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy

houses some of the most sublime images

of the Italian Renaissance

and some of the most disturbing.

The face of this Medusa is a self-portrait

of history's most antisocial artist,

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

- He had absolutely no social skills.

When it came to dealing with patrons,

when it came to dealing with his models,

and almost anybody else, his friends,

he would often fight with them.

He lived a life of drama and he had a belief

in his own genius.

He lived a life on the edges, on the margins in every way.

He also was a person who couldn't control

his own urges and desires.

He had sexual relations with women

but he was a practicing homosexual

and so that marginalized him in society.

Was he the person you'd like your sister to marry?

I doubt it very much.

But is he a person whose art you would love to have

on your wall and who would continually inspire you

with an understanding of the nature of the human condition?

Absolutely.

- [Narrator] He painted the darkest subjects

with a mastery of light.

His talent made him famous and rich enough

to afford the carnal pleasures he craved.

But as time went on, he became unstable, easily enraged,

and prone to violence.

Historians believe his deterioration was caused

by the lead in his pigments.

In this self-portrait his teeth are green,

a symptom of lead poisoning.

But though historians have dissected every aspect

of Caravaggio's life, one critical detail remains unknown.

At the age of 38 he disappeared.

His final resting place is a museum secret.

(upbeat string music)

The investigation begins in the seaside town

of Porto Ercole.

In a local cemetery, researchers pry open a hatch

that leads to an ancient crypt.

(suspenseful music)

They believe that Caravaggio may be buried here

but identifying which bones are his will be like finding

a needle in a haystack.

The team is led by historian Silvano Vinceti.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] But why look here in Porto Ercole?

Why not search the crypts in Caravaggio's home city of Rome?

The reason is Caravaggio didn't stay in Rome.

In 1606, the hotheaded artist was goaded into a duel.

After he killed the man,

the authorities branded him a murderer.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] Caravaggio fled South to Naples

where he lived in hiding.

Here his painting depicted increasingly disturbing subjects

including these self-portraits with their heads cut off.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] Then in 1610, a message came from Rome.

A rich cardinal had arranged a pardon

in return for three of Caravaggio's masterpieces.

To deliver them, he would need to get to Rome

without being arrested.

He embarked on a sea voyage via Porto Ercole

but at a stop along the way, he was apprehended.

He was separated from his paintings

and some historians believe he was murdered.

But Vinceti believes that he wasn't murdered at all.

That he escaped and made his own way to Porto Ercole.

And if he did, there's a good chance his bones

are in the local crypt amid thousands of others.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] Based on sex and age, Vinceti's team identify

11 skeletons that could be Caravaggio.

But they need to narrow the field to one.

Then someone remembered Caravaggio's green teeth

caused by lead poisoning.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] The skeletons are transported

to a laboratory in Ravenna where they are examined

by researcher Elisabetta Cilli.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] The presence of lead is intriguing

but lead paint was common at the time.

To find more evidence,

they'll need to saw through the bones.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] DNA would provide a unique identifier

if it's still present.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] Now the team has DNA to compare

with the DNA of Caravaggio's living relatives.

But there are no records of his descendants.

In the town where the artist was born,

they seek out men who share his family name, Merisi.

When their DNA is analyzed, it turns out they also share

a genetic heritage.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] Markers on these chromosomes

match the Caravaggio sample perfectly.

This is compelling evidence that the bones of Caravaggio,

lost for 400 years, have finally been found

here in Porto Ercole.

- (speaking Italian)

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] In death, as in life,

Caravaggio's final journey is by sea

as Vinceti and his team return his bones to Porto Ercole.

A master of light was revealed in the darkness.

But for those who love him, he may always be a lost soul.

(pig grunting)

Next on Museum Secrets, the treasure of the wild boar.

(dramatic music)

Inside the Uffizi, curator Fabrizio Paolucci

oversees restoration of museum's vast collection of statues.

Many are Roman imitations of Greek statues that were,

in turn, imitated by the artists of the Renaissance.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,

few statues have been flattered more than this one.

(pig grunting)

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] The wild boar's popularity

may have something to do with luck.

At the center of Florence, there's a bronze replica

with a shiny snout.

For centuries, tourist have been encouraged to rub the snout

to ensure good fortune.

What makes a wild boar a good luck charm?

That is our museum secret.

(pig grunting)

(light jovial music)

Our story begins at a restaurant in Florence

that specializes in Tuscan cuisine.

And that's because the wild boar's luck

is linked with the food that Tuscany is famous for,

dishes flavored with a fungus called a truffle.

Black ones are expensive,

white ones are ridiculously expensive.

A truffle this size could set you back

as much as a compact car.

In Italy, the truffle industry is worth

$400 million Euros per year.

In Florence, this delicacy is on the menu

at Cinghiale Bianco, The White Boar.

- Truffle is something

that you either totally fall in love with,

and it could be dangerous because it's very expensive,

or you don't like it at all.

I guess a little bit like oysters or caviar,

it's a very refined kind of food.

- [Narrator] Truffles are expensive

because they cannot be grown on farms.

They grow underground in the Tuscan forest,

the natural habitat of the wild boar.

Wild boars love them and their snouts have evolved

to sniff them out.

In the past, domesticated boars were employed

to help find truffles for their masters.

In their enthusiasm, boars would often destroy

as many truffles as they found.

So today's truffle hunters like Stefano Braccini

employee a special breed of dog

called the Lagotto Romagnolo.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] These dogs have no urge to destroy the truffles

but they must be trained to retrieve them.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] Stefano even gives puppies

truffles to play with which makes these truffles

the world's priciest chew toys.

As they mature, the dogs become obsessed with truffles.

And while their noses can't match the sensitive snout

of a wild boar, a single dog can find truffles

worth thousands of Euros.

Today Stefano delivers a sample of his harvest

to The White Boar.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] For Marco, the nose knows.

- The first thing you do when Stefano brings his truffle,

you check the consistence and you smell the truffle

because smell is important.

It tells you if the truffle is good.

- [Narrator] Marco decides that Stefano's truffles

are a worthy addition to the gourmet cuisine of Tuscany.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] But even the nose of a Tuscan chef

isn't sensitive enough to detect the tasty truffle

in the ground without a little help.

(pig grunting)

And that brings us back to why a boar is a good luck charm.

Because a nose that can sniff out buried treasure

is surely worth a rub.

Next on Museum Secrets,

a 16th century crime scene investigation.

(suspenseful music)

The Uffizi Gallery was once the political headquarters

of the powerful Medici family.

In the 16th century,

these rich commoners reinvented themselves as nobility.

The Medicis were known as schemers

but this Medici was a dreamer.

Grand Duke Francesco I built the Tribuna,

a chamber of dreams at the heart of the Uffizi.

Decorated with alchemical symbols, shells for water,

red velvet for fire, stone inlay for Earth,

and a weather vane for air.

- It's governed by his belief in the four elements

and his desire was to find mechanisms to transform

one thing into another.

The Tribuna really is a kind of distillation

of his thinking and his world view and his personality.

This place that he was creating

in order to engage in his mystical thinking.

- [Narrator] Francesco created another stranger sanctuary

just across the river from the Uffizi.

Ghostly spirits loom and pagan gods frolic.

All for the delight of his lovely wife, Bianca.

She was a dreamer, too, but their dream was cut short.

During a visit to their country villa in 1587,

both Francesco and Bianca fell ill and died

within days of each other.

Francesco's younger brother, Cardinal Ferdinando,

ordered an autopsy that determined malaria

was the cause of death.

Malaria was common in the swampy countryside

but there were rumors of foul play.

How and why did Francesco and Bianca die?

That is our museum secret.

(dramatic music)

Our investigation begins beneath the chapel of San Lorenzo

in the crypt of the Medicis.

Recently, researchers exhumed human remains

hoping to discover the causes of death of many members

of the family.

The team's medical historian is Donatella Lippi.

- We found that the corpses of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany

in small, zinc boxes.

In the box belonging to Francesco I,

we found only his bones.

- [Narrator] When Francesco's bones were tested,

they found DNA but no evidence of why he died.

And as for his wife Bianca,

her bones weren't allowed in the family crypt

by order of Francesco's brother, Ferdinando.

Bianca was rumored to be a witch.

- Ferdinando said I don't want Bianca close

to the Medici family and Bianca's corpse disappeared.

- [Narrator] A few years before the couple died,

Ferdinando also became concerned about Duke Francesco.

- Francesco I was a very strange man.

He should, to some extent, have been a perfect ruler

but it was quite clear

that that wasn't his primary interest.

His real interest was in what we would now call science

but in those days was much closer associated

with magic and alchemy.

That is the transformation of substances

and his desire was to find mechanisms to transform

base metals into gold.

He became so obsessed

that he would leave early in the morning

and lock himself in his room for experiments

and not come until very, very late at night.

- [Narrator] His dream was innocent

but it stole time from his duties as head of state.

- Cardinal Ferdinando felt that the future

of the Medici dynasty was, in fact, being compromised

and the well-being of the state was being compromised

by Francesco's increasing interest

in his alchemical experiments.

- [Narrator] Did Ferdinando's fears about his brother

give him a motive for murder?

Ken and Donatella visit the villa where Francesco and Bianca

fell fatally ill.

It happened during a family gathering.

- So we must imagine the situation, many people,

the Grand Duke Francesco, his wife, Bianca,

and Cardinal Ferdinando.

- [Narrator] According to eyewitness accounts,

something unexpected happened.

- During the lunch, very suddenly Francesco felt great pains

in his stomach and at the same time, Bianca.

- [Narrator] They died so soon after their meal,

it suggests poison was involved.

So why did the autopsy say malaria?

- Ferdinando took upon himself to have the autopsies

performed on the bodies and he was the one

who released the medical reports

and he kept complete control.

He became the spin doctor of Francesco's and Bianca's death.

- [Narrator] But recently,

Donatella discovered a second autopsy.

This one conducted by Francesco's personal physicians.

- The corpses were opened and the surgeons realized

that the same kind of poison had spoiled the entrails

of Bianca and Francesco.

This record was hidden, was concealed

because it was too dangerous.

- [Narrator] The second autopsy also states

that the internal organs were buried in the church

close to the villa.

Donatella went there hoping to excavate under the floor.

Church officials allow her to descend

through an existing cavity but not to enlarge it.

- I'm lucky that I'm so small

because it was very difficult to go in.

I had to take out a great amount of masonry, debris,

stones, bricks, bones.

I managed to find the six or seven small fragments

of biological substances which revealed themselves

to be pieces, fragments of livers.

- [Narrator] Tests revealed a mix of male and female DNA.

The male sample matched the DNA

found in Duke Francesco's bones.

And the liver contents revealed something else.

- Fragments of entrails, of liver, belonging to Francesco,

we had found the evidence, arsenic was found.

So this was the evidence that Francesco had been poisoned.

- [Narrator] The alchemist and the alleged witch

were probably poisoned by Ferdinando

but he never faced justice.

In an act of political alchemy, he transformed himself

from a cardinal into a grand duke,

usurping his brother's power in Florence.

Some say that murder victims become ghosts

if their deaths are unavenged.

If that is so, then Francesco and Bianca are with us still.

And perhaps they whisper,

in the Medici clan there is no place for dreamers.

(solemn string music)

Up next, the art loving Nazi who saved Uffizi.

(suspenseful music)

Inside the Uffizi,

a locked door leads from the public galleries

to a private passageway

called the Vasari Corridor.

It was built to allow a Medici patriarch to travel

to and from his palace without fear of assassination.

For several centuries, it has been extension of the museum

featuring self-portraits of great artists like Rubens,

Bernini, and Chagall.

Its windows provide a unique view of the Arno River

because the corridor is the second story of a bridge.

The Ponte Vecchio is one of several bridges

that span the river.

Most appear to be very old

but historian Lee Windsor knows better.

- We're coming upon the Ponte Santa Trinita,

arguably the most important bridge in all of Florence

architecturally, culturally, structurally.

And it looks at those it pre-exists the war but, in fact,

in the 1950s local architects rescued the rubble

from the bottom of the river

and used it to rebuild the bridge almost as it was.

- [Narrator] It needed to be rebuilt

because of what happened here in World War II

when allied forces began to push the Nazis out of Italy.

- In August of 1944, when the Germans evacuate,

begin to evacuate Florence,

they need to establish the Arno River as a speed bump

so that the allies can't chase them too quickly

into their new gothic lined defenses.

They need to hold the allies here for a short period of time

and in order to do that, they're going to blow

all of the bridges over the Arno River.

(bombs exploding)

- [Narrator] One after another, the historic bridges

were reduced to rubble except for the Ponte Vecchio.

Why did the Ponte Vecchio survive?

That is our museum secret.

(crowd roaring loudly)

The story begins in 1938 when Adolf Hitler

arrived in Florence with his Italian ally,

Benito Mussolini.

At Hitler's request,

they visited the Ponte Vecchio's Vasari Corridor.

Mussolini was bored but the furor fancied himself

a connoisseur of color and form.

He paused to examine several masterpieces

before he stopped to wave to the crowds.

Some Floretines still remember.

- (speaking Italian)

- [Narrator] Some believe that six years later

when Hitler's army was in retreat, he couldn't bear

to see the bridge destroyed.

- They were bombing all the bridges, obviously,

because there's eight more bridges to our left

and to our right, they bombed them all.

But wait a second, Hitler sends in a telegram saying

don't bomb this bridge here.

Why?

Because of all the artwork up above.

So that's the only thing that saves the bridge

and the Germans do not bomb this bridge.

- [Narrator] But was the Ponte Vecchio

really saved by Adolf Hitler?

Local filmmaker Gianmarco D'Agostino doesn't think so.

Beneath the arches he recently noticed a plaque

commemorating someone named Gerhard Wolf.

- I pass here a lot of times, of course,

but I never, never looked at the plaque.

I think almost nobody do it.

- [Narrator] The plaque thanks Wolf for helping Florence

and saving the Ponte Vecchio.

- I became really curious about this story

and I started to research.

- [Narrator] Gianmarco soon discovered

that during World War II,

Gerhard Wolf was the German consul for Florence.

While Nazis in other cities looted art,

Wolf did something strange.

Secretly he helped Florentines

transfer the Uffizi's treasures to hiding places

outside the city.

- He tried hard to save the works of art of Florence.

- [Narrator] And his un-Nazi behavior

extended to people as well.

When local Jews were threatened,

Wolf used his position to help them.

- (speaking Italian)

Here in the building was the German consulate

during the World War II.

Here Gerhard Wolf worked during the day.

He got in contact with a very famous Jew lawyer

in Florence and started to give him the names of people

before they were deported to Auschwitz

and other concentration camps.

He had to act undercover

because he was risking his life, of course.

- [Narrator] By the time the Germans began their retreat,

Wolf had saved hundreds of lives.

He also tried to save the city's bridges

by pleading with his superiors to stop the demolition.

(bombs exploding)

Did his pleas save the Ponte Vecchio?

Lee Windsor has a different theory.

- Prime Minister Winston Churchill

described the Ponte Vecchio as venerable

but was totally inadequate for military purposes.

You can see that it really is a pedestrianized bridge.

It's not capable, not suitable for heavy vehicular traffic.

You can tell that it's strained, and old, and weak.

To put any kind of amount of heavy military traffic

onto that bridge is going to knock it down.

The bridge is militarily useless.

The Germans know it so it's the only one they leave intact.

- [Narrator] If the bridge had been sturdier,

it might not be here today

and neither would the masterpieces of the Vasari Corridor.

And without a traitorous Nazi named Gerhard Wolf,

the museum's collections might now be gone.

The galleries would no longer whisper

that humanity achieves its highest expression

during the darkest of times.

(dramatic music)

In this place where intrigue and inspiration meet,

for every mystery we reveal, far more must remain unspoken.

Secrets of the questing mind and the troubled heart,

hidden in plain sight, inside the Uffizi Gallery.

(tense dramatic music)