Original subtitles

- [Narrator] Rome.

A city of faith and power.

And at its heart, a museum with secrets dark and strange.

Tales of barbarous acts of violence,

clashing egos,

and scandalous censorship.

Here, you can uncover messages from the past,

and reopen dark chapters from history.

(intense music)

Secrets hidden in plain sight,

inside the Vatican museums.

(intense music)

In the middle of Rome, stands the Vatican.

The epicenter of Catholicism.

(dramatic violin music)

It is both a fortified city,

and a place the Pope calls home.

(speaking in foreign language)

It also houses one of the famous museums in the world,

full of timeless treasures.

Each one with a story to tell.

Of all of these, none are more famous

than the Sistine Chapel.

(wondrous music)

All who enter here gaze up

at the luminous frescoes of Michelangelo.

(wondrous music)

What few people know is that his masterpiece

was an afterthought.

(wondrous music)

When the chapel was constructed,

the walls were filled with monumental murals,

but the ceiling was just decorated

with a simple field of stars.

30 years later, Pope Julius II

decided it needed a new paint job.

When he gave the task to Michelangelo,

he took a leap of faith,

because the artist was not then a famous painter,

but an up and coming sculptor of the human form.

His transformation of the ceiling,

an area the size of two basketball courts,

would be completed in just four years.

How did a brilliant but inexperienced painter

complete the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

in such a short time?

500 years later, when Vatican staff

embarked on a restoration project,

they got the chance to uncover this museum's secrets.

- My name is Maurizio de Luca,

and I'm the director of the restoration

in the Vatican Museum.

I worked there from 43 years.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] The restoration team spent nine years

up onto the ceiling in the 1980s.

It took them twice as long to clean the ceiling

as it did Michelangelo to paint it.

- The possibility that we put our hand

on the plaster, on the Michelangelo painting,

allowed us to investigate more and more his technique.

Fresco painting includes a series of procedures,

that cannot be seen from a distance.

But since we have gotten close,

so close to the frescoes,

we can clearly see the evidence of those procedures.

- [Narrator] The largest figures on the ceiling

are nearly 20 feet across.

Michelangelo did not attempt to paint them freehand.

Each figure started as a sketch, or cartoon,

followed by a procedure that art experts

like William Wallace refer to as "pouncing".

- Pouncing is the means of transferring

the cartoon to the plaster.

So the cartoon has actually been pricked

with little tiny holes,

and the charcoal dust in a bag

is actually pounced or pounded onto the cartoon.

(wondrous music)

Okay, we see the head, beautifully pounced,

and the hand, beautifully pounced.

- [Narrator] But pouncing was a slow process,

and Michelangelo was under pressure from an aging pope

who wanted to see the ceiling completed

before he died.

So, Michelangelo exchanged the charcoal for a blade,

allowing him to quickly incise the lines of the sketch

directly onto the plaster.

- [William] And these are the kinds of things you can see

all across the ceiling,

when you're looking at it and raking like

Michelangelo's incised marks.

- [Narrator] The artist had good reason

to heed the Pope's demand for speed.

- Unlike our idea of the papacy today,

Pope Julius II, who was known as the Warrior Pope,

was an extremely active personality,

literally leading the papal armies into war.

- [Narrator] Michelangelo may have respected the Pope,

but he was not the type of man to be intimidated.

- [William] The thing you can say

about Pope Julius and Michelangelo,

they're both megalomaniacs.

- [Narrator] There were bound to be some clashes

between these titans.

- The Pope wanted constantly to know

when Michelangelo was gonna finish,

and Michelangelo's famous response was,

"When it's done."

At which point, the Pope actually picked up a stick

and started beating Michelangelo.

"When it's done, when it's done?" He says.

- [Narrator] To get it done,

Michelangelo would endure far more physical torment

than the occasional beating from an aging pope.

On a scaffold, 18 hours a day, seven days a week,

constantly craning his neck up,

paint dripping into his eyes,

no one can say Michelangelo didn't suffer for art.

In the fourth year of his labor,

he even described it in a poem.

"With my neck puffed out like a pigeon,

"belly hanging like an empty sack,

"beard pointed at the ceiling,

"and my brain fallen backwards in my head."

Michelangelo kept going because he was tough and determined.

But that doesn't explain how he could work

on a scaffold just a few feet from the ceiling

and yet paint figures in perfect perspective

when seen from far below.

The answer may be, because he started his career

as a sculptor.

- When Michelangelo imagines a figure moving,

it's moving inwards, outwards in space,

and therefore it creates this wonderful perspective.

People ask all the time.

"Is that real, is the architecture real,

"are they sticking out of the ceiling, are they 3D?"

- [Narrator] If one removes the frescoes from the ceiling,

Michelangelo's mastery of perspective

becomes even more impressive.

He works magic with his paints,

creating lifelike 3D figures

even when the background tilts the wrong way.

- Jonah was painted on a piece of plaster

that tilts towards us,

and yet looking at the figure,

Jonah appears to tilt backwards.

It was something that he knew

would fly in the face of all the people

that had criticized him

at the beginning of the assignment saying,

"Oh, but Michelangelo doesn't know

"anything about painting."

Michelangelo denies the laws of physics

through his painting.

It's the same kind of special effect

that people marvel at in something like "Avatar".

- [Narrator] So, how did Michelangelo

complete his masterpiece in just four years?

Determination, physical endurance,

and 3D virtuosity are only part of the answer.

The rest is surely quite simply, genius.

- Michelangelo's more responsible

than any other artist in the history of the world

for raising the stature of artist.

This is the beginning of an artist

actually establishing his own criteria.

- [Narrator] Every morning, when the gates open,

thousands of visitors head straight to the Sistine Chapel,

to stand for a moment

in a place that combines the power of God

and the genius of man.

(inspiring music)

These galleries have always hosted

crowds of curious visitors,

but there was a time when they came in violence,

clamoring for the Pope's blood.

(intense music)

At first sight, it's easy to forget

that the Vatican Swiss Guards

are highly trained elite mercenaries,

dedicated for the last 500 years

to defend the life of the Pope.

Never was their duty more tested than in 1527,

during a bloody standoff in Rome.

(mysterious music)

500 years later, the Vatican museums

still bare the scars.

Here in the former papal apartments,

decorated by one of the masters of the Renaissance, Raphael,

art restorer Paolo Violini spends every day

cleaning the 500 year old frescoes.

(mysterious music)

- I've been working here in Rafael room for 15 years,

more or less.

Before the cleaning, we didn't know

the color of the eyes.

Now we can see they are blue.

It's really beautiful.

(wondrous music)

- [Narrator] The discoveries come in all forms.

- We restored this fresco

more than 10 years ago,

and we found some damages

on the faces of the popes,

and also many graffiti.

One of them, you can see the name, Luther.

- [Narrator] Luther was a German monk,

ex-communicated for challenging

the authority of the Pope.

How did his name end up incised on a fresco

in the papal apartments?

These frescoes were painted

during the artistic golden age in the Vatican.

Popes were pouring money into glorifying the papacy.

Such extravagance is exactly what Luther

and his German Protestant supporters

detested about the church.

Professor Paul Gwynne investigates

this period of history.

- Luther had been to Rome,

and been disgusted of what he'd seen.

He'd spread the word in his homeland, in Germany,

that Rome needed reform.

- [Narrator] The religious tensions

would come to a head unexpectedly,

when an army of the most powerful ruler in Europe,

the Holy Roman Emperor, descended on Rome.

- [Paul] In terms of numbers, we're talking

in the region of 20,000 troops,

swelled by German mercenaries.

- [Narrator] The Commander was there for political reasons,

but his unruly troops had other goals in mind,

and quickly took matters into their own hands.

- [Paul] The attack starts at four o'clock in the morning.

The assault is done virtually in a mist.

People on the walls can't see them coming.

- [Narrator] This was the first time Rome

had been invaded on this scale in 500 years.

- Okay, we're in modern Piazza San Pietro,

and of course Saint Peter's and the Pope

were the object of the Imperial troops.

And they were streaming through,

screaming and shouting for the Pope's blood.

The papal defenders were shouting back equal obscenities.

Lutherans, sons of whores, et cetera.

Absolute chaos.

Panic sets in, the Swiss Guard is summoned,

and the Pope prepares to leave.

- [Narrator] The Pope's Swiss Guard

had been trained for moments like this.

But on this day, they are seriously outnumbered.

- A great battle takes place in which 80%,

three quarters of the Swiss Guard

are cruelly massacred.

They defend the Pope to a man.

This was close, hand to hand combat,

fought with daggers, knives, and swords.

It would've been absolutely gory, blood everywhere.

- [Narrator] As the Swiss Guard falls,

the Pope manages to escape down this passage,

to Passetto, which links the Vatican

to a well fortified castle.

- The Pope picked up his skirts,

and ran the length of the Passetto.

The Imperial troops were lined up down here

waiting for him,

hoping to get a pot shot

as they could spy him through the narrow arrow chutes.

Now you see him, now you don't.

It must've been something like a papal duck shoot.

(arrows firing)

- [Narrator] The Pope ended up here,

at Castel Sant'Angelo,

while citizens outside were being massacred and tortured.

- We hear stories of cardinals

being whipped naked through the streets,

men being forced to eat their own testicles, for example.

Also, the tombs of the popes were desecrated,

and their bodies pulled from their coffins.

What kind of men were responsible

for this brutality?

On the other side of the city,

Paul may have found the answer.

- We are in the luxury suburb and villa

of the papal banker.

We've come here today particularly

to look at the graffiti

that was left on the walls

as the Imperial troops marched through.

1528 is the year.

(speaking in foreign language)

"Why am I who's writing not allowed to laugh?

"The Landsknecht are the ones who have put

"the Pope, papst, to flight."

The Landsknecht, German mercenaries,

were feared throughout the 15th and 16th centuries

as the crack infantry.

- [Narrator] These much feared troops

had reasons to vandalize the Raphael rooms in the Vatican.

- The Landsknecht were the pro-Lutheran sympathizers.

Luther himself had thought of Rome as a cesspool,

as a place that needed dramatic reformation,

and the Landsknecht were out to do it for themselves.

So I think we could make the case very strongly

that the people who inscribed on the walls

of the Raphael rooms,

and the people who wrote here,

were one in the same.

(eerie music)

- [Narrator] After eight months under siege,

the Pope paid a ransom for his own life,

and was allowed to escape to safety.

But the sack of Rome had brutally taken the lives

of 80% of the inhabitants of the city.

Rome wouldn't recover for the better part of a century.

(mysterious music)

(whimsical music)

Next, a cover up campaign

at the Vatican museums.

And the shocking true of what lies beneath.

(dramatic music)

(whimsical music)

The Vatican collections are housed in nine museums.

Treasures the popes have amassed

over the last 500 years.

(whimsical music)

Classical Greek and Roman statues

fill dozens of galleries.

Many of them are totally nude.

(whimsical music)

- Well, this statue is the famous

Apollo de Belvedere,

one of the founding piece of the Vatican museum,

in the collections set by Pope Julius II.

- [Narrator] Evidently, Pope Julius

had no issue with displaying this ancient God

in all his glory.

(dramatic music)

- He wanted to bring back in fashion

all the classic values.

Nudity, male bodies, perfection, ideal representation,

that's the Renaissance goals.

- [Narrator] The beauty of the human body

wasn't only showcased in the ancient art

that the Pope was collecting,

but also in the new art that he was commissioning

in the early years of the 16th century.

(dramatic music)

Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling

is a cornucopia of nudity.

- And if you look at Michelangelo's

portrayal of Adam and Eve,

we have quite an interesting juxtaposition there

of Eve's face, and Adam's genitalia.

In fact, if you flip her head 180 degrees,

the fruit of forbidden knowledge

becomes quite a different mouthful.

(whimsical music)

- [Narrator] Nudity and art went hand in hand.

Even in such a sacred space.

But it wouldn't be long before overexposure

became an issue.

20 years after he completed the ceiling,

Michelangelo painted "The Last Judgment"

on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.

It was raising eyebrows before it was even finished.

The Pope's chamberlain, Biagio da Cesena,

complained about the amount of nudity.

Saying it was better suited to a brothel,

or a bathhouse.

On hearing this, the headstrong Michelangelo

sent his critic to hell.

- Michelangelo actually puts Biagio da Cesena

as one of the judges of the underworld.

He's given asses ears, and he's immortalized

in the Sistine.

- [Narrator] Today, much of the original nudity

has been carefully covered over.

But not by Michelangelo.

The censor was a new pope.

His Holiness, Pope Pius V.

- Pope Pius was so much offended

by that genital nudity in the Pope's palace,

that he decided that he couldn't even bare

to look at it.

- [Narrator] His concern?

Nothing less than the survival

of Catholicism itself.

(church bells ringing)

Times were changing.

With the Protestant Reformation,

there were demands for a more modest church,

and some things were just unacceptable.

There was an official ruling.

No more genital nudity in the visual arts.

- There is, of course, a famous myth

that somewhere in the Vatican

there is a drawer of penises

that have been knocked off by an angry pope

with a chisel one night.

That's probably not the case.

Remember, that any statue falling,

any piece that sticks out is vulnerable.

- [Narrator] The popes may not have gone so far

as to castrate their statues,

but they certainly had them covered up.

The Bible was consulted,

and a solution was found in the story of Adam and Eve,

covering themselves with fig leaves

after eating the forbidden fruit.

(intense violin music)

And so, the censorship of nudity in the Vatican

became known as "The Fig Leaf Campaign".

Hundreds of ancient statues

received strategically placed foliage.

- It became an absolute must.

Fig leaves, underwear, draperies, whatever.

I mean, it became normal to not accept nudity anymore.

- [Narrator] One of the Fig Leaf Campaign's

first targets was Michelangelo's "Last Judgment".

Soon after the artist's death,

the Pope ordered the offending flesh covered up.

It would take a new ruling by a daring pope

to restore this masterpiece to its former glory,

or to remove the fig leaves throughout the museums.

Only then, would these ancients

be allowed to let it all hang out again.

(catchy music)

Next, an exclusive journey

into the Vatican's secret archives,

where lost transcripts recount tales of sodomy,

heresy, and burning at the stake.

(dramatic music)

(lighthearted music)

Down the hall from the Vatican museums

is the secrets archives.

An exclusive and under explored

collection of historical documents,

rarely seen on television.

It was dramatically depicted

in the blockbuster film, "Angels and Demons",

as a high tech fortress,

with low oxygen chambers and bulletproof glass.

In reality, the most high tech contraption

is an antiquated elevator,

and most documents are held

in a no frills, cement bunker.

But on its 25 miles of bookshelves

are documents that shaped the world.

Galileo's signed confession.

Henry VIII's request to divorce his first wife.

And a Napoleonic treaty.

(mysterious music)

In 2001, a mis-cataloged 00 year old parchment

was discovered here.

It revealed surprising details

behind one of the most infamous stories

of the Middle Ages.

The demise of the Knight's Templar.

The Knight's Templar were founded in the 12th century

as an elite religious fighting force

to protect the Holy Land during the Crusades.

- From the very beginning,

the Templars were made dependent

only from the authority of the Pope.

Meaning, they didn't have to answer

to any local authority.

The Templars were fabulously wealthy.

Owning land, controlling trade,

even running treasuries.

But back in Europe, their wealth brought them enemies.

Very powerful enemies.

The King of France, Philip IV,

who was seriously in debt,

wanted to bring them down.

- He wanted their estates, he wanted their cash.

All the stops were pulled out

in order to see this to completion.

- [Narrator] Even if that meant bypassing

the authority of Pope Clement V.

King Philip spread rumors

about their secret initiation rites.

Rumors of elicit sexual acts,

spitting on the image of Christ and idolatry.

- It was a huge, effective propaganda machine.

- [Narrator] Rumors soon became accusations.

King Philip arrested almost 200 Templars

including the Grand Master of the Order himself,

Jacques de Molay.

- Then he was accused of denial of Christ,

idolatry, and sodomy.

It seems that he was tortured

in order to obtain a confession.

- [Narrator] The Medievals has various,

horrific means of extracting confessions.

- The most common one was the torture of rope.

(dark music)

Another one was the torture of fire.

Finally, there was the wheel.

(dark music)

Under torture, many confessed to heresy,

a crime punishable by life in prison or execution.

In an effort to determine how accurate

these confessions were,

the Pope held an independent trial

of the Templar leaders in Chinon, France.

The original transcript of that trial was lost, until now.

- Before the discovery,

there were different theories suggesting

that the Pope didn't do his best

to save the temple.

- [Narrator] But the parchment in the secret archives

in its original Latin, tells us a different story.

- [Luca] "Knight Jacques de Molay,

"Great Master of the Templar Order,

"came before us.

"He described his initiation ceremony.

"He said he did not spit on the cross,

"but only close to it.

"As for the vice of sodomy,

"the head shaped idol, and the illicit kissings,

"he denied any knowledge."

- [Narrator] This parchment also records

the verdict of the church.

It found Jacques de Molay guilty

of sexual immortality and corruption,

but not of heresy, and so, not liable for execution.

- I don't believe that before the discovery

of the Chinon parchment,

anybody suspected or had even anticipated

that the Pope had gone this openly

to attempt absolution.

He didn't want to see the Templar wealth going to Philip.

He did not want to lose his military arm.

- [Narrator] This document should've saved the Templars,

but in the end, the King of France proved too powerful,

and Pope Clement V, too weak.

- As a pope who had been appointed by the King of France,

was really virtually the King's man.

- [Narrator] So, four years after Chinon,

the Pope dissolved the Knight's Templar,

stripping them of papal protection.

King Philip of France seized the moment.

On this island in Paris,

he ordered Jacques de Molay burned at the stake.

- The Spanish have their bullfights,

and in Europe, nothing was better

than burning people at the stake,

it was a great means of attracting a crowd.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] It was the end of the Knight's Templar,

but Jacques de Molay had the last word.

- It is said that in his dying moments,

he cursed both the King and the Pope,

saying that they would die within the year.

The Pope died within a month,

and the King of France died within two months

of the burning of Jacques de Molay.

- [Narrator] The significance of this parchment

leaves you wondering just how many other

documents there are buried in the secret archives,

waiting to be dusted off

to set the historical record straight.

Next, one of the museum's treasures

is sent to hospital,

to investigate a 2,000 year old mystery.

(mysterious music)

(dramatic music)

In the heart of the Vatican museum complex

is the Gregorian Egyptian Museum.

A large collection from Ancient Egypt,

which includes gifts from an Egyptian ruler

to the Pope.

Unusual gifts, consisting of human mummies.

(mysterious music)

Behind the scenes at the museum,

these have become the focus

of the Vatican Mummy Project,

led by curator and Egyptologist,

Dr. Alessia Amenta.

- The mummies, like treasure chest,

containing all these data about ancient life,

who can help us to understand

how these people were living,

what they were eating,

which was their social rank,

and the diseases they were suffering at that time.

- [Narrator] Now, curators have decided

it's time to open this human treasure chest

and learn its secrets.

(suspenseful music)

This means one last journey

for this delicate time traveler.

(suspenseful music)

- [Alessia] We are very worried about

every kind of movement.

- [Narrator] Too much movement,

and this 2,000 year old corpse

could crumble to dust.

- We hope that she will not move at all.

It's a risky operation for us.

(mysterious music)

- [Narrator] Mummification was an ancient art.

- The Ancient Egyptian were believing

that without the body,

they couldn't leave in the afterlife.

So, this was the most important thing for them.

- [Narrator] But mummification doesn't last forever.

- She was removed from the Gregorian Egyptian Museum

in 1991, because it was very damaged,

and as you can see, all the ropes and vertebrae

coming out from this big tear from the back.

- [Narrator] The curators decided

to try and restore her.

- Usually, mummies are not restored

because it's very complicated.

We were lucky because we can collect all the vertebrae,

and we can create again the vertebrae column.

- [Narrator] They then re-wrapped her

using the very same linen wrappings

that had begun to decay.

The result?

She looks like she was mummified just yesterday.

But before putting her back on display

in the museum,

Alessia wants to gain a better understanding of her life.

What little they do know

comes from her burial coverings.

- We know something about her,

because on these coverings,

there is written her name, Ny-Maat-Re.

She was living in the Second Century, B.C.,

in Fayoum Oasis, probably from the town of Hawara.

We don't know any more about her.

(mysterious music)

- [Narrator] In order to find out more about Ny-Maat-Re,

Alessia has decided to check her in to a local hospital.

(mysterious music)

After 2,000 years, this Egyptian woman

is about to share her deepest secrets with us.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Alessia] The CT scan is the most important step

for a study of a mummy,

because it gives a lot of information

about wrappings, about the diet of this person.

And at what age she was dying, and why.

- [Narrator] 100 times more powerful

than a regular X-ray, a CT scan uses radiation

to produce detailed, three-dimensional images

of the insides of a body.

(mysterious music)

This is the first time they've had a mummy

on the hospital premises.

She's drawn quite a crowd.

- [Man] We have a big audience in the gallery!

(laughing)

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] Dr. Francesco Danza is the radiographer

who interprets the CT scans.

Usually, of course, his patients are alive.

- We can see very clearly

the reconstruction of the spine.

That the men in museum have done.

We also have the confirmation of this technique

to make the skull empty.

- Sometimes they are taking out the brain from the eye,

sometimes extracting here from the nose directly.

- [Narrator] Egyptians believed that knowledge

came from the heart,

so they had no use for the brain in the afterlife.

Generally, it was pulled out in pieces

through the nostrils and discarded.

- [Francesco] Are we sure it's a female mummy?

(laughing)

- [Alessia] Did you do that?

Did you do that on purpose?

(laughing)

Shall I call the anthropologist?

(speaking in foreign language)

Probably some pieces of wrappings together

with the raisings used for the embalming.

- [Narrator] The CAT scan shows teeth

and newly matured bones that suggests

that this lady was only about 20 years old when she died.

As to how she died so young,

they find a clue in some abnormal patterning

on her skull.

The doctors find thin lines

radiating out from her skull marrow,

which look like hair standing on end.

They're caused by changes in the bone,

and suggest Ny-Maat-Re suffered to anemia,

due to poor nutrition or a parasitic infection.

This could be what killed her.

For Alessia, this little insight

into Ny-Maat-Re's life is bittersweet.

- Don't forget that these were a person

who were loving and had a normal life,

because in a museum they become an artifact,

but they are not.

They are really people, and so you get involved

during this guy kind of work,

so it's not always so easy.

- [Narrator] Ny-Maat-Re is the first

of nine mummies under investigation

at the Vatican museums.

Restoring them and piecing together

their identities one by one,

the Vatican Mummy Project

is rescuing these Ancient Egyptians

from crumbling into obscurity.

Next, another ancient death at the Vatican museums.

But this time, death by snakes.

(dramatic music)

Here at the Vatican museums,

the magnificent marble sculptures

have enthralled artists, popes,

and tourists for centuries.

One of its founding pieces

is that of a pagan priest and his sons

in the fight of their lives.

(dramatic music)

Most everyone has heard the legend

of the Fall of Troy,

but not everyone knows about the one man

who wasn't fooled by the Trojan horse,

and trieds to prevent the disaster.

Laocoon.

(dramatic music)

After besieging the city of Troy for years,

the Greeks had left a giant, wooden horse

filled with troops outside the city walls.

- Laocoon, as one of the high priests of the city,

rushes outside the city walls,

and tries to persuade the Trojans to ignore it

and not bring it into the city.

(speaking in foreign language)

He says.

"Whatever it is, I don't like it,

"and I don't like Greeks bearing gifts."

He throws a spear at the belly of the horse,

it resounds, and at that moment,

he is punished by the Gods.

- [Narrator] The punishment appears

in the form of two huge serpents

that emerge from the sea,

and set upon Laocoon and his two sons.

- All three are horribly strangled.

They are killed, the Trojans are terrified,

they think that Laocoon is being punished

for wounding the horse,

and they drag the horse inside.

Troy is destroyed.

(fire crackling)

- [Narrator] The great marble statue

depicting Laocoon and his sons

was discovered underground, near Rome, in 1506.

It was an instant sensation.

- Because of the dramatic nature of the discovery,

and because of the mania

for collecting ancient sculpture,

Pope Julius II had it removed to the Vatican,

and became part of the Vatican collections.

- [Narrator] Many artists of the time,

including Michelangelo, were awestruck by the Laocoon.

But where did it come from?

And who had carved it?

- It was immediately identified

as the great sculpture group of Laocoon,

described by the Roman writer, Pliny the Elder.

- [Narrator] Pliny the Elder was a first century

Roman historian,

who wrote of an extraordinary Laocoon statue

carved by three artists.

Most experts believe this was the same sculpture

that had been lost for 1,500 years.

But one art historian caused a stir recently

when she suggested this wasn't the statue

Pliny described at all, but a fake

created by none other than Michelangelo.

(mysterious music)

Antique forgery has been a lucrative business

for hundreds of years,

and was practiced by some of the best known artists

in the Renaissance, including Michelangelo.

- I think it's a very interesting suggestion

that Michelangelo was a carver of the Laocoon.

We know that Michelangelo was responsible

partly for helping putting it back together,

and the idea that he may have actually

polished or improved some parts of it

in order to make it look better

would've been a normal practice in the Renaissance.

I doubt very much that he was responsible

for carving this stature from the beginning.

It's composed of multiple, large blocks of marble,

so he would've had to move these blocks,

and the task of carving this figure

without anybody knowing it

would've seemed almost impossible.

- [Narrator] William believes that proof

of the artist's identity can be found

in the archeology of a Roman villa,

120 kilometers south of Rome.

- And here we are in Sperlonga,

an area much favored by the Roman elite.

And this is by far the most impressive

of all the imperial villas built here.

In 1957, sculpture groups were found in the cave here,

and it was the largest group of Greek sculptures

found in almost 1,000 years.

(mysterious music)

- [Narrator] The figures depict episodes

in the life of Greek mythic hero, Odysseus,

who was among the troops in the fall of Troy.

- All the sculpture has been removed from the grotto

and put into the modern museum

for conservation purposes.

The most dramatic group was seen

of Odysseus attacking the monster,

Polyphemus, or Cyclops,

driving his spear into the eye

of this one-eyed monster,

set in this absolutely natural

theatrical-like grotto,

essentially a Roman Disneyland.

- [Narrator] There is a connection to Laocoon here.

On one piece of sculpture,

which stood in the middle of this pond,

William finds a key piece of evidence.

- Right here, on the front of the tiller,

the Sperlonga group is signed

by the three artists who actually carved

this entire group of sculptures.

- [Narrator] These are the same names

that Roman writer Pliny says

carved the famous antique Laocoon.

But it isn't just the artist's signatures

that finally convinces William.

- For me, as an art historian,

the fragment of the Sperlonga group

that most emphatically reminds me

of the head of Laocoon in the Vatican,

is this detail of Odysseus.

And it's particularly in the deep set features,

the open mouth, the exaggerated hair,

and the expression of pain on the face of Odysseus

that reminds me very much

of the face of Laocoon in the Vatican.

- [Narrator] As the legend tells us,

the Greek Odysseus devised the ruse

of the wooden horse that brought down Troy,

and its brave priest, Laocoon.

Two opposing heroes

in one of the greatest stories in history.

Laocoon immortalized in one of the

world's greatest sculptures.

(dramatic music)

There are stories behind every object

at the Vatican museums.

On the walls, the ceilings,

and hidden away in dim corridors.

You may not see them at first,

but if you take a closer look,

the secrets are revealed,

and they never cease to astonish.

(dramatic music)