Season 14

In this episode, Alberto Angela proposes a singular journey among the hidden surprises of Rome. "The fourth day" is what tourists always miss. Travel agencies reserve a short time for visiting the city, just three days. In this way many wonders of the capital, suggestive and fascinating like the famous ones, remain hidden. Alberto Angela "reveals" the fourth day, so to speak, hunting for the masterpieces hidden for centuries in the eternal city. Password: what's beyond that facade?

Alberto Angela invites us on an extraordinary journey in the footsteps of a protagonist of history, a man who many consider the father of modern Europe: Charlemagne. We are surprised by the many adventures of the famous ruler, discovering his conquests, his life and his countless loves. Through his events we also discover how daily life took place in the Middle Ages.

Alberto Angela will take you on a spectacular journey towards the great north: from Denmark to Norway, beyond the Arctic Circle. It is Scandinavia, where the climate and an environment much more extreme than the gentle temperatures of the Mediterranean have produced peculiar pages of history.

In this episode you will discover precautions that are within everyone's reach but which some populations or groups have always practiced with extraordinary results. The same behaviors that have recently attracted the attention of doctors and researchers who study the mechanisms of aging. We will talk about nutrition, we will try to understand which type of movement is best suited to keeping us fit over the long distance and much more. The journey will start from the islands of Okinawa, Japan; we will discover how well-being arrived on these islands just a few decades ago and those who are now elderly have led a spartan existence for a good part of their lives, often marked by periods of enormous difficulty. Yet, those very elderly people seem to have slowed down the effects of old age. In these islands people live for a long time, but above all the diseases typical of old age are rarer.

In this episode of "Ulisse, il piacere della scoperta", Alberto Angela tells us the story of Gaio Giulio Cesare Ottaviano, better known as Augusto, the man who changed history, transforming Rome from a Republic into an Empire.

The most impressive military landing in history: 160 thousand soldiers, 11 thousand planes and almost 7 thousand boats of all types: it is D-Day, the longest day. Thousands of young American, English and Canadian soldiers wrote one of the most important pages of the Second World War. As the pale light of dawn spread over the English Channel, the largest amphibious invasion force ever assembled up to that point landed on the coast of Normandy: it was June 6, 1944. “Ulisse” reached these ex-boys in their homes: in France, in England, in the United States but also in Germany, where Alberto Angela met, among others, the young German sentry who on the night of the operation, on the famous Pegasus Bridge, spotted the first Allied soldiers and shot into the air , the first flare.

What do we know about our dogs and cats? Do they understand us more than we understand them? Ulisse dedicated an episode to discovering our best friends.

Ulisse will go to explore the sea, that immensity of water that allowed life to be born and evolve on our planet. An event that will not simply be dedicated to the sea, but above all to the relationship between man and the sea, which began at the beginning of the adventure of Homo Sapiens, and has never been interrupted. So Alberto Angela will be in Genoa, the maritime city par excellence, between the Galata Museum of the Sea, the very rich Aquarium and much more, to retrace the stages of this very long and fascinating human adventure, in its historical and scientific implications. A journey that will develop in two directions: horizontally, exploring the surface of the sea, to learn about the forces that animate it within, the titanic energies capable of moving immense masses of water. And then vertically, into the blue vastness of the sea to get to know the infinite variety of species that populate the oceans, going further and further down, until reaching the bottom of the abyss.

This episode will be dedicated to the great artistic wealth of Italy. The archaeological and cultural heritage of the country will be x-rayed: the host will tell us the many stories closely linked to the masterpieces, as well as all the anecdotes about thefts and forgeries. A priceless treasure which is however exposed: we will therefore learn about the painstaking and demanding work of all those people who do their utmost to save this unique heritage in the world.

It is surprising how living beings are able to adapt to the most extreme situations and the most inhospitable places on the planet and even manage to live there: from the fiery deserts of Iran, Libya and the United States, up to the Danakil plateaus.

Ulisse, il piacere della scoperta will guide us on a journey along the tracks to discover this wonderful vehicle. We will board a working steam locomotive and discover the royal carriage used by the Savoys at the beginning of the last century. From the first steam trains to the futuristic magnetic levitation trains, Alberto Angela will talk about the unstoppable race of the train and its impact on every corner of the world and on distant and different cultures. He will then show unusual and true aspects behind the scenes of today's trains. From the subway we take to go to work in the morning to the projects for new futuristic railway lines. Or the importance it had for our fathers, as in the great emigration from south to north in post-war Italy. We will then see the construction of the first railway in history: the Liverpool-Manchester, designed by the self-taught engineer George Stephenson.

DNA: the most surprising "invention" of nature and evolution, the true director that allows everything that lives to exist. In fact, DNA is the key that opens the doors to our past and allows us to discover a lot about everyone's behavior, on how to protect ourselves with new treatments and medicines, and even on how to unmask a murderer, or manage to reconstruct the appearance of disappeared living beings. Alberto Angela explains why in some areas of the world there are mainly people with light complexions, or almond-shaped eyes, or long-limbed bodies and why, despite all the differences between human beings, it makes no sense to talk about races. And then, diseases, epidemics such as the plague and the exception of individuals with the same DNA: homozygous twins. We also go to ancient cemeteries in search of the deadly microbe responsible for the Black Death to understand if this or other epidemics could return to exterminate humanity.

Alberto Angela narrates one of the most famous dramatic events in history: the eruption of Vesuvius which in 79 AD destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, obliterating these two cities of the Roman Empire. The 24 hours preceding the eruption of Vesuvius seen through the story of two families, one from Herculaneum and one from Pompeii who lived on the slopes of Vesuvius, unaware of the imminent catastrophe. The story will develop in the most evocative places of the two sites: the Villa dei Misteri of Pompeii, of which we will see an absolute preview of some of the wonderful recently restored frescoes and the arches of Herculaneum where almost all the inhabitants of that city died while trying to escape from the fury of the volcano, towards the sea.

An extraordinary journey by Alberto Angela to the continent furthest from us and perhaps the least known: Australia. Why was it discovered just 250 years ago? Why are there animals very different from other continents? What is Ayers Rock, the enormous rock block located in the center of the continent, and why is it considered a sacred place by Aboriginal people? Is it true that Giuseppe Garibaldi was in Australia? These are some of the many curiosities that the episode answers. Just two and a half centuries ago, until James Cook's expedition, Australia was not even suspected of existence; and even today its interior - the so-called outback - behind the large coastal cities remains almost completely uninhabited and largely unexplored. There are many wonders and surprises that Ulysses reserves for us on this journey to discover the lesser-known aspects of Australia.

Ulisse – il piacere della scoperta will lead us to learn about the history of Greek civilization, which, expanding into the Mediterranean basin, gave rise to what we know today as Magna Graecia in Italy. The splendors of Ancient Greece. The Greek cities, scattered across the Mediterranean, reached almost 700 and of these almost a third are located in Italy. Alberto Angela will tell us about Ancient Greece at the time of its maximum splendor and will guide us on a spectacular visit to some of the most important archaeological sites in our territory: Paestum, Syracuse, Agrigento. Temples, theaters and palaces which still today tell us a lot about the Greeks and also about ourselves: their daily life, the female figure and love relationships, social and political organisation, sporting competitions, wars. We will see how the Greeks revolutionized the way we understood civilization and imposed models destined to influence the Western world for millennia to come.

For many centuries, Rome has been a destination for millions of tourists every year. What attracts them are the archaeological remains of the empire, the artistic wonders that have overlapped over the centuries, but also (and above all) its being the center of Christianity. During the episode, Alberto Angela takes a journey to the many places, monuments and buildings that have made the history of Christianity. The journey touches the main Basilicas but also more secluded, hidden corners of the city, where there are important testimonies of the history of the Church.