Episode 3 The Silk Road

2,000 years ago,

an ancient trade route slowly spread across a continent.

For 5,000 miles, the Silk Road ran from China's ancient capital

through Central Asia.

It passed through mythical cities such as Samarkand or Persepolis

until it reached the bazaars of Istanbul, the merchants of Venice.

I'm a historian

and I've always been fascinated by its impact on the world.

This is the story of the Silk Road and my travels along it.

The Silk Road was a place of adventure and invention.

It cut across borders and brought cultures into contact.

And conflict.

I've travelled through China and Central Asia and I'm now

heading to a place that was critical linking East and West.

A country whose troubled past has, until recently,

put off Western travellers like me.

I'm starting to think that I may have actually been

an Iranian merchant in a former life.

I'm going to Iran, a place where modern politics has obscured

the glories of her Persian past.

A past rich with fascinating characters, and where the culture

and art of the empires they built

spread to every part of the Silk Road.

And where I make a surprising discovery about something familiar.

To you and me, of course, it's paisley.

From Iran,

I'll travel to the cities at the western end of the Silk Road...

..and I'll discovered that many of their great palaces,

buildings and churches were inspired by the East...

paid for and made possible by the Silk Road.

Iran stood at a crossroads of the Silk Road

and, for centuries, traders and travellers

plied a network of caravan routes that

crisscrossed its vast deserts and high mountain ranges.

The Iranian Plateau effectively controlled two major

arteries of the Silk Road, the main road from China

and Central Asia, where I've come from,

and that from the Persian Gulf.

In the final leg of my journey, I'm going to be travelling that southern

branch of the Silk Road, through the deserts of Ancient Persia.

Transporting products from India and beyond, the southern route

passes through the fabled caravan cities of Yazd, Esfahan and Kashan,

oasis cities that linked the ports of the Persian Gulf to the

main Silk Road, Tehran.

But the traders who travelled this section of the Silk Road

had to cross a formidable barrier -

one of the hottest deserts in the world,

where summer temperatures can reach a sizzling 70 degrees Celsius.

There was no way round.

But despite this incredible heat,

merchants have plied this route for centuries.

And that's because of a brilliant piece of engineering that

transported precious drinking water from the mountains

to places where people needed it.

This car tyre, and it's one of several,

they're all around me, marks an access shaft to an underground

irrigation system, an engineering miracle that the people

of this region mastered some 4,000 years ago.

Now, the Ancient Persians didn't leave the car tyre,

but they did construct this.

An underground stream called a qanat.

Hey!

And qanats are arguably the single most important factor in sustaining

the Silk Road in the desert regions of Persia for thousands of years.

Qanats are easy to spot from the air

and if you follow the holes in the ground in this satellite photograph,

it becomes obvious what qanats allowed

the ancient Persians to build.

They built cities.

Legendary cities.

Like the one I'm about to visit and have always wanted to see.

Persepolis.

This was the heart of the first Persian Empire,

an empire ruled by fabled kings whose influence spread far and wide.

It was Cyrus the Great who forged the first Persian Empire

in the sixth century BC.

But it was another king, Darius I, who built Persepolis.

Darius was famous for many things. He dug the first Suez Canal,

introduced standardised weights and measures, and coinage, too.

It was this administrative genius that earned him

the title Darius the Great.

But to his subjects, who admired this administrative flair,

he was known as Darius the Shopkeeper.

He was also the greatest royal architect of his dynasty.

Even in its ruined state, Darius's palace, built around 500 BC,

with its imposing gateways,

monumental columns

and exquisite reliefs,

leaves you in no doubt about the message.

His empire heralded a new world order.

Darius didn't bother to fortify Persepolis,

because he didn't need to.

All of his enemies had been defeated.

And here are the enemies his dynasty had defeated.

Indians.

Lydians.

Syrians.

Turks.

Armenians.

Libyans.

The list goes on.

All subject to the Persian king.

This wall shows 23 subject peoples of the Persian Empire

bringing tribute to their emperor.

It shows that his empire stretched from North Africa

to North India to south-east Europe.

It was the biggest empire that the world had ever seen.

Here we have representatives of the city of Samarkand,

with their distinctive two-humped Bactrian camel,

all marching forward.

I've met these characters before.

They're called Sogdians,

merchants whose descendants 25 centuries on I met

in a remote valley in Central Asia.

Look at their distinctive trousers and hair, all very Sogdian in style.

They're carrying cups, which represents

the tribute that they're bearing to the Persian emperor.

The Sogdians were the Silk Road's middlemen.

It was through them that China reached out to the Persian emperor,

and trade began to flow through the arteries of Central Asia.

Trade arteries that would be extended west by this.

Linking Persia to what is modern-day Turkey, Darius built a Royal Road

to control his empire and to connect East with West.

I wanted to know if this paved the way for the Silk Road itself,

So I've arranged to meet historian, Dr Tabatabai.

TRANSLATION:

To what extent did the existence of this Royal Road help

the growth of the Silk Road in general?

Darius the Great is credited with nothing less than joining

together the unknown worlds of East and West,

the very foundation of my Silk Road journey.

But as well as communication and trade,

the Royal Road also brought trouble.

These broken and fallen columns bear witness to just how much trouble.

Darius's decision not to fortify Persepolis proved to

be its undoing, and the white marks at the base of this pillar

are a clue as to what happened,

because when limestone is subjected to intense heat, it turns white.

In 330 BC, Alexander the Great swept down Darius's Royal Road

and burned Persepolis to the ground.

Its end was sudden, violent and merciless.

When he looted the treasury,

it was said that it took 3,000 camels to cart away the treasure.

But while the once-great buildings slowly turned to sand

and the memory of her great kings faded,

the gods they worshipped lived on.

Symbols such as this one,

a clue to a religious past that the world has all but forgotten.

So, who was this strange winged figure?

What did it mean?

2,000 years ago, it wasn't just merchants who traded

on the Silk Road. Pilgrims and prophets did, too.

Religious battles were waged along the Silk Road.

Deities, cults, priests and rulers jostled with each other

in a bid to persuade the populace

to sign up to their particular brand of religion.

This was a time when societies were highly receptive

to explanations for everything from the mundane to the supernatural,

and when faith offered solutions to all problems.

I'm heading to Yazd...

CALL TO PRAYER

..an ancient oasis city, where I'm hoping to find some living

connections to the Silk Road's past,

and to one of the oldest religions on Earth.

The Ancient Persians believed there were four elements from

which everything was made.

Earth, wind,

water, fire.

Yazd is a city built on all four.

These mud-brick alleys protect Yazd from the fierce desert heat.

Our old friend the qanat supplies her people with life-giving water.

Wind towers draw away the hot desert air

from the streets of the city.

And in a temple smoulders an eternal fire, guarded by priests.

Here's that symbol I saw in Persepolis.

The Zoroastrian god called Ahura Mazda.

Ahura Mazda first appeared to a man called Zarathustra and commanded him

to spread his teachings and win converts.

No-one is entirely sure where Zarathustra was born, or even

when he lived, but he was one of the first prophets to offer

a single omnipotent and invisible god.

The faithful were commanded to pray to Ahura Mazda in the direction

of the light,

but the only light that the Ancients controlled was fire,

and so they built temples to keep the flame burning for eternity.

It's said that the flame in here has been burning for over 1,500 years.

At the heart of Zoroastrianism is the idea of duality,

the eternal battle between good and evil, light and dark.

It requires believers to commit to a life based on good thoughts,

good words and good deeds.

I'm incredibly privileged to be allowed to get

so close to this fire, and it's wonderful.

So much of history is inanimate, it's dead.

But this is a living, breathing, crackling thing,

from a very ancient past that's been

so, so lovingly cherished and tended for over a millennium.

I love it.

From Iran to the Caspian Sea, Central Asia, India and beyond,

Zoroastrianism put down roots all along the Silk Road.

Just outside Yazd is the village of Kalantar.

Here, I hope to find another living connection to the religion's past -

a Zoroastrian dialect that is over 2,000 years old.

I've been invited into the home of one of the villagers to see

this ancient religion practised.

THEY PRAY

The prayers are led by the men in a tiny room.

Everyone else sits outside.

THEY PRAY

Sitting in the doorway,

I feel honoured to be allowed to watch the proceedings.

Though it's a little tricky to follow what's going on.

PRAYERS CONTINUE

The prayers are conducted in an ancient Zoroastrian language,

and the offerings are dedicated by neighbours

to the souls of the former occupants of the house,

for whom they seek forgiveness from God.

Once it's over, the villagers share and eat the offerings.

Delnavaz Javanmardi is the village leader,

and I'm keen to find out more about what I've just seen.

I recognise that you are speaking Farsi right now,

but they were speaking a different language during the ceremony.

What was that language?

TRANSLATION:

It's noticeable that the women are wearing

very beautiful coloured headscarves.

Is colour important to how you dress?

"Lively colours to freshen up our souls."

Now, that's a thought that brilliantly sums up the Silk Road

and how it fused culture, religion and art.

Zoroastrianism not only freshened up souls, some say it inspired this...

..a style of fabric that originated here,

in the textile workshops of Yazd.

This is called a termeh, a cloth made of wool and silk

that's been produced here in Yazd for centuries.

And it's used for everything from headscarves

to cushion covers and tablecloths.

One of the most common motifs used to decorate it is this,

called a boteh.

Some people say it was inspired by a pear, or the cypress tree,

others that it represents the Flame of Zoroaster.

To you and me, of course, it's paisley.

I'm pretty sure the young Queen Victoria,

who made the paisley pattern famous,

didn't see it as the Flame of Zoroaster.

But the emblem found its way from Northern India

to the weaving town of Paisley, near Glasgow, in the 17th century.

It's a motif that can be found all along the Silk Road.

The Flame of Zoroaster was a powerful symbol

of both life and death.

Since the time of Darius the Great, Zoroastrianism

was the state religion of Ancient Persia.

It prevailed for a thousand years.

But in 610 AD, they faced a new challenge,

one that would change the Silk Road, and the world, for ever.

At the beginning of the seventh century,

far away in the Arabian Peninsula,

a trader named Muhammad began to receive

a series of revelations from God.

The revelations ultimately formed the basis of the Koran

and a small but radical movement that would rise to change

Persia and the ancient world.

Islam was born.

It was a powerful idea.

So powerful, in fact, that in a matter of decades,

the Arab Crusading armies of the new religion

had decisively defeated the armies of Persia.

A Zoroastrian fire temple once stood here,

but when Islam reached Yazd, its days were numbered.

This mosque now stands in its place.

It's called the Jameh Mosque,

and it's one of the oldest mosques in Iran.

On the ceiling above me,

the tiled pattern depicts no less than 110 different names of God.

All along the Silk Road, the Zoroastrian religion

fell into decline as Islam became a major new force.

And here in Iran, it would form into a brand of Islam

that one day would divide the Islamic world -

the split between Sunni and Shia.

But some traditions here pre-date that time.

Down this alleyway and through this doorway, I've been told

there's an unusual connection to the moment Islam arrived in Iran.

CHANTING

A sort of mosque-meets-gym.

This is a zurkhaneh, which, in Farsi, means a house of strength.

DRUMBEATS

These rituals date back to

the Arab defeat of the Persian army 1,500 years ago.

Forbidden to train openly by their Arab conquerors,

Persian warriors met secretly to exercise and practise instead.

Mohammad Ali Dehghani runs the zurkhaneh here in Yazd.

Is there a specific routine that each event goes through?

TRANSLATION:

Is that routine, that tradition,

a very ancient one that's been passed down?

THEY CHANT

Well, they certainly like mixing things up in Iran.

It's the first time I've ever seen anyone praying, singing,

weightlifting, dancing and juggling all at the same time.

While the Islamic religion subjugated new regions and peoples,

it also went hand in hand with the expansion of trade.

Over half the Silk Road came under the influence of Islam.

Trade routes, oases,

cities and natural resources were targeted and absorbed.

Mosques sprang up all along the Silk Road.

Some very small and some very great.

In the centuries that followed the Arab conquests,

Persian and Arabic art and culture embraced and intertwined.

It was a partnership that became known as the Persian Renaissance.

And it blossomed in one of the Silk Road's most fabled cities - Esfahan.

Since I've been in Iran, I've rather been wondering where everyone is.

Well, I've found them. They're in Esfahan.

This mosque in the centre of Esfahan

is a magnificent symbol of the artistic and spiritual renaissance

that started 500 years ago.

It's also a powerful reminder

of the forces at play in this part of the world.

The Persian Renaissance began in the 16th century,

and the king who built this mosque

was a man who set out to redefine his country

through both art and Islam.

And to do that, he needed to impress.

WHISPERS: The dome above me is more than 100 feet high,

but there's a second exterior dome beyond that.

And it's the space between the two, some 45 feet,

which is responsible for all of the echoes that you can hear.

RESOUNDING ECHO

You may be wondering why I'm whispering.

Well, if I spoke any louder,

this entire place would be filled with echoes.

Scientists have actually measured some 49 distinct echoes here,

though only seven are audible to the human ear.

But that's more than enough for the call to prayer

to be heard by the faithful.

CALL TO PRAYER

This mosque was built by a dynasty of shahs called the Safavids.

It was the Safavids who launched a vigorous campaign across Iran

to eradicate Sunni Islam

and replace it with a different brand of Islam called Shia.

The sermons preached from here

declared that the people of Iran must convert to Shia,

a form of Islam which claimed the that the line of imams

who succeeded the Prophet Muhammad

were descended not from his father-in-law, as Sunnis believed,

but from his cousin and son-in-law instead.

This mosque, the Royal Mosque, was built by Shah Abbas the Great,

the only Islamic ruler in Iran to be bestowed the title of greatness.

And standing here in this most beautiful of places,

in the heart of what would become his new Iranian capital,

it's not difficult to see why.

When work started on the Royal Mosque, Shah Abbas was 52.

And as the years ticked by, he grew anxious

he might die before his life's architectural jewel was completed.

As the years turned to decades, Abbas grew impatient.

His architect Ali Akbar Isfahani used some innovative,

laboursaving techniques,

one of which I'm sure you've used in your bathroom.

Rather than covering the walls with millions of individual tiny tiles,

he came up with the idea of using larger,

prefabricated patterned tiles called haft rangi.

They've been standard ever since

and can be found in most DIY stores today.

And if you look closely, you'll see that the great man

has even signed the building that he built.

The inscription gives the date, 1616 AD,

and his name, Ali Akbar Isfahani.

When Shah Abbas came to power in 1588, his country was in chaos

and locked into a bitter and often bloody rivalry

with the Sunni Ottoman Turks.

Yet within a decade, Abbas moved his capital to Esfahan,

where he not only rebuilt the city, but set out to remake Iran too.

Central to Abbas's nation-building was his definition of Iran as Shia.

While it had been his grandfather who had first declared Shia Islam

to be the country's official religion,

it was Abbas who first forged the link between nation and faith

in much the same way

that Protestantism defined a Tudor England.

Shia Islam then provided a clear boundary between Iran

and Abbas's greatest enemies - the Sunni Ottomans to the west

and the Uzbeks to the north.

In rebuilding Esfahan, Shah Abbas pulled together

the three main components of power in Persia -

the power of the clergy, represented by the Royal Mosque,

the power of the Shah himself, residing in the Ali Qapu Palace,

and the power of the merchants, whose Silk Road booty

and money paid for it all.

Above the entrance gate to the Esfahan Bazaar can be found

frescos of European figures.

They represent Shah Abbas's vision

to make Esfahan a new centre for international commerce

and to upstage her main competitor - the Ottoman capital, Istanbul.

The tangle of lanes and stores bearing fruit,

sweets and spices offer a veritable feast for the senses.

It's a lemon. It's the weirdest lemon I've ever seen.

Oh!

Under the domed and arcaded halls, time-honoured Persian crafts

can still be found, including paisley, of course.

Shah Abbas recognised the commercial benefit of promoting the arts.

It was in these royal workshops that Esfahan's artisans

would become the engine of the Persian Renaissance.

Painters...metal-workers...

..textile-makers...

..potters and carpet-weavers

achieved new heights of perfection and took the world by storm.

400 years later and they're still at it.

In a small workshop just off the square, I find a family

working away at a particularly exquisite craft - Meenakari.

Mina means "heavenly", kari "art".

Heavenly art.

Esfahan is famous for it.

Meenakari is the art of enamelling -

painting, colouring and ornamenting metal objects

and then baking them at incredibly high temperatures.

It's painstaking work.

I love it and I just have to buy one.

The Persians called Esfahan "Naqsh-e Jahan", Half the World,

meaning that to see it was to see half the world.

Up until the 20th century, Persia was the common name

the West historically used to describe this part of the world.

But her people used another - Iran.

I think it's particularly interesting that Iran

literally means a place of order, a place of civilisation.

They even had a word for the lands beyond their country,

and it was Turan.

It meant a place of chaos, a place of barbarism, of darkness.

But actually, if you're lucky enough to come here, you find that

the people are careful, measured,

kind, thoughtful, generous, polite.

They're dignified, respectful.

They're interesting, they're entertaining.

It really is a wonderful place.

And after a long day selling silk, or, like me, travelling,

you get to sit down, have a pipe and a cup of tea

and a bit of chat and a bit of banter. I absolutely love it.

And I'm starting to think that I may have actually been

an Iranian merchant in a former life.

Merchants from Europe, Asia and China flocked to Esfahan's bazaar.

Links were forged, deals done, fortunes made.

Abbas's vision proved so successful that he effectively re-routed

the Silk Road through Esfahan.

Meanwhile, outside the new capital city,

a new golden age of commerce dawned.

Today, this section of the Silk Road,

with its HGVs and service stations, looks not unlike the M6.

But in the age of the Silk Road, it was caravans,

not juggernauts, that carried goods.

And they required a whole network of inns and hostels -

in Persian called caravanserai.

Hundreds can still be visited today along Iran's former Silk Roads.

That there are so many is down to one sleepless

and very uncomfortable night.

One day, Shah Abbas went hunting, became separated from his party

and was forced to spend the night in the desert, uncomfortable and alone.

Now, a passing goatherd who, of course, didn't realise

that Abbas was the king, gave him a blanket and some food.

The next morning, Abbas was rescued

and he soon discovered from his advisors that such discomfort

and loneliness was the norm

for merchants passing through his country.

His experience led to a massive building programme.

He built 999 caravanserai to nurture

and protect the commerce that was pumped into Iran by the Silk Road.

And this just happens to be one of them.

As service stations go, this beats anything I've ever seen on the M6.

The design and shape of caravanserai barely changed over the centuries.

Built in a square shape for both defensive purposes

as well as protection from the elements...

..and inside, designed for security of goods

and a place for cooking and rest.

There's little poetry in service stations these days,

but the Persian poet Hafez

found something to say about the 14th-century version.

Hafez's beautiful poetry was celebrated all along the Silk Road.

And he had quite an eclectic fan base,

including Timur, the famed Mongol warrior,

and, more bizarrely, Victorian England.

This one's particularly appropriate for where we are,

standing outside an ancient caravanserai.

"A caravan from China comes

"For miles it sweetens all the air

"With fragrant silks and dreaming gums,

"Attar and myrrh

"A caravan from China comes.

"O merchant, tell me what you bring

"With music sweet of camel bells

"How long have you been travelling

"With those sweet smells?

"O merchant, tell me what you bring."

Of course, what the merchants brought

depended on what the cities on the Silk Road actually wanted.

And the master weavers and dyers of Kashan, my next stop,

were particularly exacting.

Underneath this beautiful domed ceiling is Kashan Bazaar,

which sells an object of desire for which the Silk Road

and Kashan in particular is renowned.

To make it, the local artisans not only needed bales of silk,

wool and camel hair, but pigments for colour dyes.

Pomegranate, azure,

ivory, red cochineal, yellow larkspur

and the most precious of all, Tyrian purple.

In the hands of local weavers, the product they created

became a byword for luxury, famed far beyond the borders of Persia.

Carpets.

No wonder they were said to have magic powers.

It was under Shah Abbas that Persian carpets

reached their zenith in elegance and reputation.

Nowhere more so than here in Kashan.

And while it's men who trade them...

..it's usually women who make them.

The traditional skills of Kashan carpet-weaving

are passed down to daughters from their mothers and grandmothers.

Their fingers seem to fly,

knotting the wool to the warp using a distinctive Farsi knot.

The weaving style is applied with such delicacy

that the back and front of the carpet are almost indistinguishable.

The size of this carpet and the scale of the task

is quite difficult to get your head around.

Eight people working on it every day for a year-and-a-half,

and the knots are so small,

even though you can see their fingers working busily,

you can't actually see it getting any bigger.

But if you put your hand on it, you can feel it vibrating.

I think the word's "thrumming".

In any case, it's definitely growing.

It's alive.

From magic carpets...

..to frescoed ceilings...

..to coloured tiles...

..to Persian gardens.

This blossoming of arts and culture under Shah Abbas

added up to an astounding cultural rebirth in Persia.

Word of the Persian Renaissance

trickled down the Silk Road to Istanbul,

where the defenders of Sunni Islam, the Ottomans,

could not but feel threatened by this new commercial,

cultural and Shi'ite state on their border.

Built by Shah Abbas, I'm in Bagh-e Fin Garden, just outside Kashan.

In his advanced years, this is where he came to escape the heat

and stresses of Esfahan.

There's a mausoleum here in Kashan which might contain

the remains of Shah Abbas.

After his death, three - and some say four - coffins were prepared

and each was put in a different part of Iran.

Perhaps this was to ensure that his remains could not be

scattered by his enemies after his death,

perhaps it was a statement to say that he ruled over

the entirety of Iran.

But which one contains Shah Abbas?

Well, no-one really knows.

A few hours' driving to the north of Kashan is my last stop in Iran -

the caravan city of Rey, where the road from the Persian Gulf

joins the main Silk Road from China and Central Asia.

Today, it's better known as Tehran.

32 shahs of Iran followed Shah Abbas.

This tower was built by the last of them in 1971.

A fusion of architectural styles through the ages,

it was designed to commemorate 2,500 years of the Persian Empire.

Standing between West and East, the Persian Empire

was the Silk Road's gatekeeper and shaped its history for just as long.

It seems so appropriate that the monument which marks the end

of my journey in Iran is such a fusion of ideas, both old and new.

And also that it's a gateway,

a gateway to the West and a gateway to my next destination.

I'm heading to the city which that gateway challenged

and marked journey's end for thousands of merchants and caravans,

the capital of the Ottoman Empire

and the terminus of the overland Silk Road.

Istanbul- the great trading city that Shah Abbas hoped to rival

when he built Esfahan.

Istanbul is often seen as the bridge between East and West.

But there's an intriguing side to the city and its history.

I know why the Silk Road started in China,

because the Chinese had silk and the world wanted it,

but Silk Road merchants and caravans were trading in Istanbul

a thousand years before the Ottomans built this bazaar.

So, how did Istanbul become one of the world's greatest trading cities?

And why did the overland Silk Road end here?

The Ayasofya, a place that preserves the Silk Road past

and a time when Istanbul was known by another name - Constantinople,

the seat of imperial Byzantium for a thousand years.

This was once the largest religious building in Christendom,

the Byzantine rival to St Peter's in Rome.

These extraordinary mosaics weren't uncovered until the mid-19th century

and contain a clue to Constantinople's Silk Road past.

In the middle is the Virgin Mary

and to the right is the first Byzantine emperor, Constantine,

who moved the Roman capital here in 330 AD.

The figure on the left is the man who built the Ayasofya,

the Emperor Justinian.

Here, he's shown holding a model of the church.

But look what he's wearing.

Gorgeous, colourful silks.

The inventors of silk fabric, the Chinese,

had always tried desperately to keep its production

a closely guarded secret,

but silk was always a staple of subterfuge and espionage

and so its secrets were impossible to keep.

There's one story that the Emperor Justinian sent two monks

to China in search of silk moth cocoons

and they smuggled them back hidden in bamboo canes.

True or not, what we do know for certain is that

by the fifth or sixth centuries,

silk not only was a Byzantine product,

it was also a symbol of wealth and power.

The story of the monks is probably a myth,

woven like the precious material itself.

But we do know that Justinian was desperate to learn

the secrets of silk production.

As these mosaic figures reveal,

silk ran through the veins of ancient Byzantium.

Silk symbolised rank and social status. Silk was power.

Dr Anna Muthesius is a silk historian

and has come to the Ayasofya today wearing a colour that,

over a thousand years ago, would have been considered treason.

We're standing in the Ayasofya and you're wearing

the most magnificent piece of purple and gold silk. Tell me about it.

This is the closest thing that I've seen to what would have been

an imperial Byzantine silk worn in Ayasofya,

and I simply thought I must have it.

Well, it's wonderful, isn't it?

And it's noticeably similar to what's up the wall there.

-Will you explain what we're looking at?

-Yes.

On the wall is Alexander, the Emperor Alexander, 912 to '13,

and he is wearing the epitome of Byzantine imperial dress.

So he's wearing this long scarf down to his feet.

On his feet, he's got purple shoes.

The purple symbolised the death of Christ

and the gold symbolised the glory of God's resurrection.

And it's not just this silk scarf and the slippers,

he's wearing a tunic, as well, isn't he? He's completed covered in silk.

He's absolutely covered. He's covered in the imperial purple

and it was treason to wear these silks dyed in these dyes.

You would be considered a usurper of the throne and killed.

-That's extraordinary.

-Yes.

If we imagine the court here, with the emperor in amazing

purple and gold silks, what was everyone else in the court wearing?

There were 18, um...categories, ranks,

and each had their own uniform.

He had a foreign personal guard,

and they would be given different types of silk.

He had the whole of the bedchamber,

the whole of the stewards of the dining halls,

the whole of the choirs,

they each had their silk uniforms.

Right. It's extraordinary, I think,

-how a fabric can define a civilisation.

-Identity.

It does, it defines the civilisation,

because through silk, you could order the court,

you could have a hierarchy of status,

you could distinguish the empire

and you could act out empire on a public stage.

Like me, you might have spotted the paisley motif I saw in Iran.

And here it is in the Ayasofya.

The fabric, the colour, the design,

all products of that route from China.

Once again, art playing its part in the art of power.

Viewed from the perspective of my Silk Road journey,

the momentous decision of Emperor Constantine to move

the imperial Roman capital here in the fourth century

makes perfect sense.

Rome's future lay not in the West,

but in the superhighway from the East.

Constantinople was to be the Romans' Silk Road city,

and it was governed through the very fabric that gave the road its name.

As the terminus of the overland Silk Road,

and standing at a crossroads with Europe,

Constantinople became the largest and most important trading city

in the Eastern Mediterranean.

But as Constantinople's wealth grew, others grew envious.

I'm now in a part of Istanbul called Galata,

and during the 11th and 12th centuries,

this whole area began to fill up with traders on the make.

But these people weren't originally from Constantinople.

They were Genoese and Venetian merchants who, until the arrival

of the Ottomans, were some of the biggest commercial players in town.

They controlled the sea lanes of the Eastern Mediterranean.

The maritime Silk Road.

This is the Galata Tower.

It has an amazing view which, of course, was why it was built.

It was from here that traders and merchants could watch

the comings and goings of their trading fleets

in the waters of the Golden Horn below.

In a way, this tower marks the end of the overland Silk Road

and the beginning of the maritime Silk Road

to the trading cities of Italy.

Venice, in particular, did very well out of Constantinople.

Goods traded between the two cities

accounted for half of international Venetian trade,

but until the 13th century, the Venetians remained ignorant

of the 5,000-mile trade route to the East.

But that all changed in 1295...

..when a great trader and explorer returned to his home city of Venice

dressed in brightly-coloured silks,

and considerably richer than when he'd set out.

He'd come from the Court of the Kublai Khan in China

and, like me, travelled through Central Asia,

Iran and back here to Venice.

His adventure had taken 24 years

and he was electrified by the places, faces

and things he had seen.

His name was Marco Polo.

His house still stands, and this is his front door.

One Venetian biographer wrote that when it opened,

he was greeted as a complete stranger

because his family had long since given up hope

of ever seeing him alive again.

Marco Polo later recorded an account of his travels.

It was originally called Il Milione - A Million Tales.

It's arguably the most famous travel book ever written.

Marco Polo's descriptions of entirely unknown civilisations,

their resources, advanced technology and wealth

amazed the readership of backwards Western Christendom.

This is the book that first revealed the East to West.

And in reality, it's a travel guide tailored to the needs of merchants,

with details of directions, distances,

the kind of terrain to expect, how much food to pack.

Marco Polo's travels revealed a new world of commercial links

that reached as far as Persia, Central Asia, India and China.

More merchants followed in Polo's footsteps

and the riches began to flow.

The ideas and products that Marco Polo and other travellers

had seen during their travels trickled down the Silk Road.

In Europe, they ignited.

They formed, in part, a movement which we call the Renaissance -

an explosion in new thinking, new art, new inventions.

A quintessential Renaissance city,

Venice is a place I understand better now,

positioned at the far west of the 5,000-mile Silk Road

to which Europe owes so much.

From musical instruments to mathematics,

to the dozens of technical innovations,

like paper and printing.

Even Silk Road characters like Timur

become the stuff of plays and operas.

Now, across my whole journey in China, Central Asia,

Iran and Turkey, the Silk Road itself is enjoying a renaissance...

..because we're starting to acknowledge what we owe to the East,

gifts, inventions and ideas that tell a history

that's been overlooked.

And the clues to that history are everywhere,

if you know where to look.

This pillar in St Mark's Square bears the faces of merchants

who brought those gifts and inventions.

Turks, Syrians, Asians and Persians.

All figures from the Silk Road.

The pillar supports the Doge's Palace.

The crenulated decorations, the lattice windows

and pointed arches are the marks of Islamic influence.

Over there, the distinctive tall cupolas of St Mark's Basilica

resemble the mosque domes I saw in Iran and Central Asia.

Despite the hoards of tourists, come rain or sun,

the Piazza San Marco never fails to impress.

We've seen this square so many times in movies, on canvas,

in print, on TV.

It's become an enduring image of the Renaissance.

But that's a movement that was paid for

and made possible by the Silk Road.

The road that helped set Europe on a path of unstoppable change,

triggered a golden age and the rise of the West.