Pleasure Dan Cruickshank's Adventures in Architecture

I'm on a journey to see the architecture of pleasure.

In the middle of the Brazilian rainforest, an opera house!

In a bustling Indian city,

an elegant hotel with a taste of the Raj.

In the Veneto,

a villa where pleasure was mathematically constructed.

In southern Italy,

excess and indulgence in a Roman playground.

And in the mountains of Bavaria,

a fairytale castle.

Mumbai, on the west coast of India.

One of the great destinations for travellers and traders

and on the waterfront... The Taj Hotel.

The Taj in Mumbai is one of the world's great hotels

and it's long been a symbol of its city.

It's the first major building you see when arriving by ship

and its dome has long been a navigation beacon.

When completed in 1903,

the hotel was the last word in luxury living in India.

The streets of Mumbai teem with life.

Few places on earth are as frantic and noisy!

Aah, peace. I'm already feeling cocooned.

I'm checking in to discover how a grand hotel,

how a palace of pleasure, actually works.

I should say now that I like my old hotels to feel old, to be old-fashioned.

I do hope I'm not going to be let down.

-Hello.

-Good evening.

-Good evening. I have a reservation here.

-Please have a seat.

-Oh, yes.

Could I please request for your last name?

Cruickshank.

From its earliest days at the dawn of the 20th century,

this is a building that elevated its guests to the status of royalty!

The staircase is the hotel's great architectural glory

and in many ways encapsulates the aspirations of the place.

The hotel was designed originally by a Hindu architect called Khanderao

but he died and it was completed by

a British chap called Chambers, and it's Chambers, of course, who now tends to take the credit for this.

It is, however, a wonderful fusion, a fusion of European gothic

with Indian moghul details, a wonderful piece of work.

And I must say standing here now, I can imagine the ladies in their

full evening dress sweeping down the staircase on their way to dinner.

The Taj is home to one of Mumbai's earliest licensed bars, opened in the 1930s.

-Can I have a vodka Martini, please?

-Sure.

How would you like it? Twist of lime?

Yes, just a twist.

That looks very good.

-That's delicious!

-Thank you so much.

You've made a few things in your time, obviously.

-I couldn't lie, if that wasn't good I couldn't say it was good, but it is very good.

-Thank you so much.

And thank you very much. Golly!

In my last 25 years I must have made thousands of these.

You're practised!

Dawn next morning,

and The Taj is already at work to feed more than 1,000 guests.

And they're all fed from this one busy kitchen!

One more for cereal!

Good morning, sir.

Good morning, breakfast, lovely!

Ooh, lovely fruit, thank you so much, and coffee. Lovely.

Of course, all grand hotels are places of fantasy, palaces of pleasure, great escapism.

One can, while one can afford it, imagine oneself a prince waited on hand and foot.

To achieve this luxury takes an army of workers...

One for every guest.

But many of them exist in a parallel world,

virtually unseen by visitors.

I've just entered the bowels of the hotel.

This is a place where tourists do not penetrate. I've come down here to see how the hotel operates.

It's a real "Upstairs, Downstairs" world, this.

Up there - all fantasy and ornament, down here - all functional.

In the laundry room, you see the scale of the operation.

Such a huge hotel was the idea of Jamsetji Tata,

an Indian industrialist.

I'm about to come face to face with the man himself. Hello.

Hi.

Now, I'd heard of this shrine in the subterranean part of the building.

It's in the control room, in fact, and here is a portrait

of Jamsetji Tata, the blessed founder of the hotel.

And every day, I'm told, the staff put this floral garland in front of the portrait.

During the Raj, the British dominated the social scene in Mumbai

and Indians were barred from many of the finest clubs and hotels.

Jamsetji Tata was determined to construct a place where Indians and Europeans could meet on equal terms.

The hotel had a peculiar start.

An astrologist recommended that it open on a particular day in 1903,

and the opening went ahead despite the fact that the dome

above the staircase wasn't completed, only two floors of rooms were ready

for occupation, and there was no electricity, which meant the lifts didn't work.

But in spite of its clumsy opening, the Taj had towering ambitions.

It's a glorious marriage of the ornamental and the functional.

And at the top of the building, you can see the Taj's true brilliance.

The central dome's not only a great ornamental landmark,

but it helps the hotel to function, helps it to breathe.

The dome and the well of the staircase are like a great chimney,

they ventilate the building.

Hot air rises and exits through these windows.

I tell you, it's very hot up here now and as hot air exits it sucks in refrigerated air from down below.

A very sensible piece of natural ventilation.

The hotel's an ingenious structure in which modern services

were very cunningly integrated with the architecture

and in which, new, pioneering technology was used most creatively

to form a building that was both comfortable and very solid.

I love these corner domes,

very ornamental, but they're there to contain water tanks.

That was a very brilliant idea - it got round the water shortages

in the city in the early 20th century and made sure

that every bathroom in the hotel had water all the time.

The Taj has modernised over the years. But it's still visited by Mumbai's traditional grandees.

Is that OK?

Yes, thank you very much, excellent.

When did you first come to the Taj Hotel?

Er, I think I was about 16 when I first... Somebody brought me.

I used to live outside Bombay, and somebody brought me

to see this beautiful place, and I was absolutely bedazzled.

Saturday night here was a very, very grand affair, and sometimes on dress nights, the young men

would be in their mess jackets and cummerbunds and looking very elegant.

I also imagine the Taj played an important role as almost the politics of India.

I mean a lot of people would come here, the Maharajah would come here,

they could be maybe more liberated here?

Of course. Especially during the racing season, because a lot of them had their studs

and their stables, and they would race their horses.

And after the races they would come here for dinner, especially on a Saturday night.

The maharajahs lived, they had suites here where they would come regularly, so many months of the year.

Today it's another big hotel.

For us, with our links with The Taj, it will always be a second home.

The Grand Hotel survives as a palace of pleasure,

but it's no longer quite what it was.

It's been reinvented.

It's no longer the preserve of the princes and the aristocracy,

the rich, the powerful and the famous.

They're now dominated by well-heeled, demanding, globetrotting tourists.

So they are rather international in feel but they're still places of pleasure.

Bavaria, southern Germany.

People are celebrating the coming of spring.

In the 19th century, this was the playground of the Bavarian royal family.

Danke schon.

And here, one monarch indulged his wildest passions -

creating an extravagant and intoxicating building.

Cheers!

This is Schwangau, Bavaria, home to a fairytale vision

created by a man who wanted to turn his dreams into architecture.

He wanted to build to escape the modern world.

He wanted to build to escape humanity.

His name was Ludwig II, the Dream King.

As a child, Ludwig loved the countryside, especially around here.

It was the perfect theatre for his lively, romantic imagination.

He created a fantasy world, based on Bavarian folktales,

tales of chivalry, and, of course, such tales demanded

a castle for him to inhabit.

I understand that.

As a child I fantasised about a castle, a place of safety, security,

cosy, a castle with a great tower that I could crawl.

But for me that remained a fantasy.

But for Ludwig it became a reality!

This is the Schloss Neuschwanstein.

The castle is only 150 years old but it's a vision of medieval romance.

I've long been intrigued to see this place. This is not just architecture.

Entering here is like entering the mind, the body, the soul of a man.

The castle reflects Ludwig's dreams of being an all-powerful ruler.

Ludwig looked back into history,

recreating a time when kings were answerable to no-one except God.

This is the throne room, a model of Ludwig's universe.

A temple to pure, just and absolute monarchy.

It's inspired by a Byzantine Christian church,

and proclaims kingship by Christian virtues.

Up there we have the six canonised kings,

standing below an image of Christ in judgement.

And above me - the starry firmament, the sun under which the king rules.

And here below me, the image of the earth, the cycle, the wheel of life.

We have plants, and animals - all of this creates the ideal world

that Ludwig thought he would rule in an ideal manner.

To create this fairytale castle, Ludwig embraced modern engineering.

Neuschwanstein has more in common with a New York skyscraper than a medieval castle.

Ludwig liked the look of the past but he wanted to utilise

the technology of the present,

so the walls are made of brick just clad with a veneer of stone

and here, you can see the major structure is just made out of steel.

Steel girders, steel beams.

Astonishing.

At the heart of the castle sits the Singer's Hall.

Inspired by the operas of Richard Wagner, here Ludwig could lose himself in heroic music and legends.

To bring the music to life,

Ludwig sought solitude in the most mysterious of places.

Golly, this must be the most extraordinary room in this extraordinary castle.

Here, at the upper level, the king created a subterranean grotto.

It is inspired by the grotto in the Tannhauser saga.

The grotto in which Tannhauser worshipped and met Venus, the goddess of love.

And here's the king's bedroom, in a delicate, high gothic style,

rather like a shrine -

an exalted, sacred space, a marvellous, monastic cell.

And here is his bed - an incredible affair

with a portion

rather like a medieval tomb.

Above the bed is an image of love,

with a bow and arrow aimed directly at the king's heart.

The whole theme of the bedroom is love, or rather the trials

and tribulations and complications of earthly love.

On the walls are a series of paintings, showing the story

of Tristan and Isolde, set in the court of King Arthur.

Theirs was an adulterous love, brought on by sorcery,

that ended in tragic death.

But why should the king surround himself

with this story?

Surely this story of illicit, doomed love spoke to Ludwig

because his homosexuality filled him with remorse.

For him, earthly love was a matter of guilt.

Like Tristan and Isolde, death offered the only salvation.

Neuschwanstein is Ludwig's greatest achievement.

Here he could enjoy perfect isolation - liberation, really.

From this tower he could survey the landscape

that inspired his romantic imagination since childhood.

But this peace was not to last.

Ludwig's extravagance attracted powerful enemies in the Bavarian court.

In 1886, at the age of 40,

Ludwig was declared insane and unfit to rule.

He was dragged from his bed in Neuschwanstein,

exiled from his fairytale castle.

One day later,

Ludwig and his doctor were found dead.

Their bodies were found here, the site now marked by this cross,

which seems to be rising rather eerily from the water.

Was it suicide?

Was Ludwig, heartbroken,

seeking salvation through death?

Or was it murder?

The whole business remains intensely mysterious.

But one thing is certain...

The king's death was very convenient for those in Bavaria,

who thought his reign bizarre.

Within weeks of Ludwig's death,

his castle was opened to the public to recoup its expense.

Ludwig's eccentric vision would repay its costs many times over.

And now Neuschwanstein brings pleasure to the world.

Ludwig made our dream of a magic castle real.

Modern Pompeii in southern Italy.

Since the 17th century, we've looked to Italy as a fount of civilisation,

not only in art and architecture

but also the art of loving, of eating and drinking...

And the art of pleasure in the senses.

But nearly 2,000 years ago

this was the scene of the most famous disaster in history.

The volcano Vesuvius erupted in AD79,

destroying the vibrant city of Pompeii.

And for 2,000 years, the cataclysm has overshadowed the real story.

Pompeii, the city of pleasure!

Excavation of the ruined city started in the 18th century.

The ashes preserved the way the people of Pompeii lived, even the way they took their pleasures.

This is quite amazing. The first thing one sees

on entering this house is an image of a man with a gigantic penis.

This is the god Priapus, and he is warding off the evil eye of envy.

He's saying to anybody coming here, "Don't begrude the wealth of the people who own this house,

"and if you do, get out! Don't come in."

The gigantic penis represents health, wealth and happiness.

And it's being weighed on a scale with a bag of gold.

It's saying, of course, that health is worth its weight in gold.

If you've got it, flaunt it!

This was the house of a family of former slaves, the Vettis.

They had become rich as free men,

and they spent their new-found wealth on dazzling their guests!

Golly, just look at this room.

It would have been used for formal entertaining.

Just imagine when the frescoes were complete.

It would have been overpowering.

Wonderful Pompeiian red, framed by black pilasters and columns.

Really a splendid interior.

This room's not only very beautiful,

it's also very informative because the walls are decorated

with little scenes that tell us about the great trades

that flourished in Pompeii just before the city was destroyed.

Here we see cherubs engaged in perfume making.

Incredible little scene there.

And here there's cherubs disporting themselves, hunting.

And now back to business. Here they are making jewellery...

Goldsmithery going on here.

Lovely little scene of these cherubs hammering away, making some delightful object.

And here, almost the best of all, we see the cherubs involved

in the wine trade - here they are with their little amphorae full of wine.

And here's a bit of a wine-tasting going on.

Some wine being poured into a dish to be sampled.

Incredible because the people that built this house, the Vetti,

made their wealth through the wine trade, it's very much their emblem.

This is the triclinium, the dining room.

There would have been three couches in here and a table in the middle for the food.

What amazes me about this wonderfully preserved interior

is the bizarre content of the decoration.

Here, we see an image from a Greek myth.

The goddess Pasiphae, there she is, contemplating the white bull, with whom she's soon to mate.

An incredible thought! The guests and family, sitting here, reclining on their couches,

contemplating a scene of bestiality!

In Pompeii, pleasure was raised to the status of a religion.

This is one of the most enigmatic and beautiful rooms of the ancient world.

Few people can agree about the precise meaning of these frescoes but it seems certain

they're to do with initiation into a cult through the stimulation, the liberation of the senses.

Here we see music, here someone drinking wine...

intoxication.

And over here there's pain -

this young lady being initiated is actually receiving a severe flogging

and all of this is presided over by Dionysus.

The god of drunkenness and wine.

Vesuvius, where the vines grew, that was sacred land to Dionysus.

He was very much the God of this area, the favoured God of Pompeii.

The world of Dionysus could be cruel and destructive,

and there was a bloody side to Pompeii's quest for pleasure.

This is where gladiators fought.

This amphitheatre can hold 20,000 people.

It must've been incredibly daunting to enter this huge arena.

The Romans were shockingly addicted to blood sports.

Here, animals fought animals, animals fought men, men fought men...

to the death!

In 59AD, the violence in the arena overflowed into the crowd.

The people of Pompeii had a grudge against the people

from a neighbouring town, Nuceria, who were also here.

The two factions started to fight.

There was a frightful riot.

People jumped from the seating into the arena and fought alongside the gladiators.

There were many casualties.

Rome was shocked and, as a result, banned gladiatorial contests in this arena for 10 years.

The life of Pompeii has seeped into its very walls,

and this was particularly true when it comes to graffiti, which is all over the city.

You can read the city like a book.

You can tell people's names, their concerns, their passions.

And here is some graffiti recording the names and appearances of gladiators,

those men doomed to die were the heroes of the people of Pompeii.

Here we see a chap called Panacenta, and he's shown in his particular fighting gear, his armour.

Another fellow called Severus, and here,

Albanus, and after the name of Albanus is the number 19.

19 victories in the arena.

One must assume this graffiti was scratched just days

before the eruption of Vesuvius, a moment frozen in time.

Pompeii also had a popular red light district.

A carving in the road points me in the right direction!

I'm going to the Lupanari, the house of the she-wolf, the Roman slang for prostitute.

This is the only purpose built brothel known to survive from the Roman world.

The hall here is amazing.

A series of frescoes on the wall up here,

showing scenes of couples engaging in various sexual activities.

I suppose these were to titillate the customers,

although I don't imagine that they needed much titillation.

Or simply showing the services offered by the prostitutes.

These rooms are not only small, but very closely packed together.

And over here is...a lavatory.

Imagine the noise in this place when business was brisk, the smell, the atmosphere!

And here is one of the prostitutes' rooms, a sort of cell really,

with at one end a bed made of stone with a stone pillow.

I guess there would have been a mattress on this.

Amazing to sit in this space and contemplate the life

going on here 2,000 or so years ago.

Vesuvius destroyed the life in Pompeii but, ironically,

this very act of destruction, preserved the fabric of Pompeii for posterity,

opening a window into the ancient world...

a moment frozen in time.

The Amazon in the Brazilian rainforest.

The river that will lead me to one of the world's great opera houses.

My first stop is to see where the money came from.

Mauricio's family have been rubber-tappers for three generations.

It was money from the rubber trade that paid for the opera house.

Mauricio's found his tree and I see it's a young tree.

It hasn't been cut yet, so I suppose therefore...

Oh, he's cutting it now...

It's richer latex.

Here we go, diagonal cuts, so...

By gravity, the sap of the tree, the latex, will seep out and run down.

Oh, look, my goodness me, it's coming out already, straight away.

A tree full of life... Here it comes.

In the late 19th century, this sap transformed the Amazon.

A boom in demand made fortunes for the rubber barons who controlled the industry.

Oh, look, there you are, elastic, brilliant.

There it goes. It's a wonderful example of elastic...

It works!

Yes, and into there.

So it's congealed, this, into a rubber band.

Actually, I need a rubber band, that's rather handy.

But for the workforce, life was grim.

Trapped into debt and treated brutally.

I'm keen to know what Mauricio makes of the opera house paid for with their toil.

Have you ever been inside it?

My journey takes me to the point where the Amazon is joined by two mighty rivers.

I'm at the meeting of whe Waters, where the Rio Negro, on my right,

meets the Rio Solomoes, flowing in here from my left.

The amazing thing is, these rivers have different coloured waters, as you can see.

Rio Negro, the waters are inky black, and the Rio Solomoes are light yellow.

And just upstream of this extraordinary crossroads is the great inland port Manaus.

The rubber boom transformed Manaus from a shabby backwater

into a heaving centre of commerce.

At last - I'm about to reach my destination, the Teatro Amazonas.

It was built in 1896 - a piece of Paris in the heart of Brazil.

After my journey up river,

I approach the building with some trepidation

but, my goodness, it is rather wonderful.

The approach is very dramatic -

sweeping staircase up to this terrace,

and in front of me looms this powerful portico.

Corinthian colonnade, a great semi-circular pediment above.

WOMAN SINGING

The auditorium is sensational.

It's so special - very fragile, very, very wonderful.

I love these tiers of galleries with their iron fronts.

It's all to do with the pleasure of the arts

and also has much to do with the veneration, in a way, of that great city of pleasures - Paris.

Because standing here looking up, the ceiling is a wonderful conceit.

The idea is one's standing below the Eiffel Tower, looking up.

There are the tower's four legs, which was a new wonder of the age when the theatre was being designed.

And the four legs frame four paintings showing the arts.

Dance, over there, frolicking maidens, music...

..tragedy and, above the proscenium, the great epitome of all the arts...

opera.

Elaine Martorano is a soloist at the Teatro Amazonas.

She grew up in a wooden shack in a poor part of town.

But her life changed when she heard a performance on this square in front of the opera house.

When the Opera House was built, it was for the elite of Manaus. Have times changed?

Do you think the opera, classical music, now brings people together, makes all people feel as one?

Tonight Elaine is going to perform on stage,

realising her dream of bringing opera to the people.

This opera house may have been built on the pain and suffering of the rubber tappers still felt today.

But, at the same time, the building now inspires rich and poor alike.

My final destination, and it's back to Italy.

A true indulgence for a lover of architecture.

I'm on the trail of one of the most influential and imitated architects of the Western world.

Andrea Palladio.

Palladio was born 500 years ago,

yet his architecture continues to inspire, astonish, to delight.

He believed that he possessed the key to beauty, and he used it

to create buildings that are the ultimate in visual pleasure.

I'm on my way to see one of his most exquisite pieces of work, to try and discover its secrets.

One of his finest creations was built in the 1550s,

the Villa Barbaro.

Gosh, this villa has immense architectural presence.

Sitting on this high bit of land in front of me, commanding all before it.

The first thing that strikes one is a rigid symmetry, suggesting order, balance, harmony.

The central section of the villa is topped with a triangular pediment supported on giant columns.

It's a temple front. It's meant to invoke the gravity, the dignity, of the golden age of Rome.

The focus of the villa is this mighty cube, which defines the whole design.

Every detail of the wings and pavillions is proportionate to this cube.

The result is harmony and timeless beauty, commissioned by the Barbaro brothers of Venice.

This magnificent front suggests the location of the main rooms

of the villa or at least the largest rooms but, rather surprisingly, it doesn't contain the main door.

That's somewhere else.

Guests would enter the villa by walking along this arcade.

It's very impressive. Rather formal for the countryside, indeed quite urban.

I feel like I'm entering a public building.

This is sensational.

This part in front of me, this was the public world

where the Barbaro brothers entertained in great style, great state.

It does look rather like a sort of great basilica, a great church, a great hall. Fantastic!

The walls are decorated by Paulo Veronese, in a trompe l'oeil 3-D effect.

Painted figures and architectural details enhance the proportions and sense of space.

And here one has evidence that there was a door -

built into the fabric of the structure, there's a recess to the door and here's a hinge.

This door separated the public world here from the very private world here.

This salon is shaped like a cube.

Its ceiling is covered with 3-D decoration that makes the room appear more lavish.

The rooms each side of this cubical hall show in a very direct way

how Palladio would relate the different parts of a building in a most harmonious manner.

This room is double square in plan, a double cube.

It's twice as long as it is wide,

and the double square was one of Palladio's ideal, divine proportions.

The proportions of the villa are like musical notes.

This whole building resonates like a carefully composed piece of music.

All of this - the precise proportions, the carefully considered relationships

between the different parts - was intended to give an intense sense of pleasure.

As well as proportions, Palladio embraced symmetry.

Doorways mirrored doorways in perfect alignment.

The dining room is, quite simply, a Palladian jewel box.

One's drawn out of the private part of the villa by this fantastic, exuberant confection.

It's called a nymphaeum,

and is decorated with images from classical mythology.

It's as if the Barbaros are inviting the gods to join them in their pleasure ground.

The nymphaeum is the villa's final triumph.

A mixture of the decorative and the divine.

Throughout the centuries, people have tried to understand

just how Palladio's buildings give such pleasure.

Nearby Vicenza holds the key.

The city's still dominated by Palladio's genius, and enjoyed today for its beauty.

And it's here you can see a book that's become an architectural bible.

In front of me is a first edition of Palladio's Quattro Libri, the four books of architecture,

published in 1570, well over 400 years old, published of course during his lifetime.

This is an amazing document to handle.

It's one of the most inspirational and profoundly influential architecture books ever published.

No detail is left out,

from floor plans to facades,

capitals to colonnades.

But what is the secret of Palladio's architecture?

Clearly, it's to do with the use of particular proportions,

which he believed were divine in origin, used in very precise relationships.

But will these proportions and relationships always lead to beauty and pleasure in architecture?

Well, of course, pleasure is a very personal matter.

But what one can say though, with certainty,

is that Palladio's architecture has given pleasure to many people for over 400 years.

It's certainly stood the test of time.

I personally find it incredibly stimulating.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd - 2008

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