Terra X - Die Päpste

Three-part Terra X series chronicling roughly 2,000 years of papal history — the rise and fall of the papacy from its greatest worldly power to the threat of its undoing. The arc runs from the apostle Peter, through the medieval clash of pope and emperor (the Gang nach Canossa), to the sack of Rome and the Reformation. Famous popes who shaped the fate of Europe are profiled, with documentary sequences shot at the major sites of papal history — Rome, Florence and Avignon — and a special permission to film in the underground necropolis beneath St. Peter's Basilica during the archaeological search for the apostle's tomb. Animations reconstruct how the old St. Peter's, the mausoleum of the "poor fisherman from the Sea of Galilee", was transformed into the great basilica that became Europe's largest construction site of its time. The series also explains key papal symbols and rituals — the conclave, the tiara, the Fisherman's Ring — and presents the only surviving love letter written by a pope.