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Palaces of Europe: Season 2 Directors: Stephane Ghez, Mathilde Damoisel, Laurence Thiriat, Stephane Guffroy, Sabine Quindou In Europe, palaces, castles and manor houses symbolize bygone empires and kingdoms. Such buildings reflected the ambition and power of the men and women in control. This series' goal is to talk about these places, re-situate them in the course of history and re-discover the major personalities who embodied them. Historians, curators, guides and everyone who makes these places come alive today slip behind the scenes of the past. - Chantilly: The Princes' Heritage This film is divided in three parts; The first one: “The Duc d'Aumale's Heritage", presents the Chateau de Chantilly as the Duke's work. As we visit the collections and discovers the Chateau as he rebuilt it, a discrepancy is to be seen: the Chateau, as it is now, no longer respects the conditions of preservation set down by the Duc d'Aumale, mainly due to a lack of resources. The second part: "The Aga Khan, Chantilly's New Patron”, portrays the Prince's actions to save Chantillt and attempts to define his reasons. The third and final part: "the Grand Conde's Chantilly, a Rival to Versailles", takes us round the grounds and gardens designed by Le Notre and recalls the estate's sumptuous past during its most prestigious period, that of the Prince de Conde. - Saint Petersburg: Peter's challenge Peter the Great was a despot and a builder, brutal yet endowed with rare intelligence, authoritarian yet free. He was the tsar who opened Russia to the world and to progress, and who turned it into a powerful empire. His spirit is still present in the life of the city and of its inhabitants three centuries after the tsar laid the first stone of his capital city. Sovereigns have come and gone, tsars or fathers of the people, but this deep bond lives on. It is as if Peter's opening up, his curiosity and his building frenzy ended up forging the unique identity of Saint Petersburg. - Louis II of Bavaria's Crazy Castles Over the course of this documentary, a great importance has been given to the personality of Louis II of Bavaria, but above all, we try to understand what led him to create his castles in 1867, after a journey to France. Jean des Cars, historian and Louis II specialist, accompanies us all along this almost initiatory journey. His perfect knowledge of Louis' history gives us a chance to discover this king's crazy castles, Neuschwanstein, Linderhof, and Herenchiemsee. - Budapest: On the Trail of Mathias Mathias the Just is a legend in his country. During his reign which extended from 1458 to 1490, Hungary's art and culture developed in a spectacular fashion. He turned his palaces into Renaissance jewels. And yet not much remains of the prestigious past, mainly due to the country's numerous occupations, often leading to the destruction of these monuments. - Christian IV: Copenhagen's Beloved King Rosenborg is the starting point of our excursion to Frederiksborg, where Christian was born on April 12, 1577. He extended it into a majestic palace, now affectionately known as the Danish Versailles. We then visit Kronborg, an imposing but elegant fortress built at the entrance of the Baltic Sea, Denmark's principal source of wealth, where Shakespeare set the story of his great tragedy, "Hamlet". The rest of the documentary shows us round the main monuments of the historic centre (the Stock Exchange, the naval dockyard...)
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