Original subtitles

The beautiful coasts of Turkey and eastern Europe

are visited by millions of us every year.

But a few miles inland is a whole different world.

One that is intoxicating, mysterious and steeped in history.

This is such an incredible building,

it was the largest church in the world for 1,000 years.

The land where one of the most formidable empires,

lasting six centuries

and spanning continents was founded.

Tesekkur ederim.

I'm Alice Roberts,

and I'm travelling hundreds of miles by train through Turkey

and eastern Europe.

Oh, wow, look at that.

Lovely.

I want to discover the fascinating story...

Go.

..of the Ottoman Empire.

Oh, no. SHE CHUCKLES

This is the mausoleum of Osman himself,

the sultan who started the Ottoman dynasty.

Through it's distinctive architecture...

Beautiful courtyard.

..it's historical leaders...

The early Ottoman sultans had their eye on this prize,

Constantinople.

..and remnants of its turbulent past.

What a horrific monument.

It's the final chapter of my Ottoman journey,

and I'm travelling through Eastern Europe.

In Romania, I go in search of the Ottoman relics

that survived the purge at the end of the empire,

where everything was destroyed, almost.

Probably it's one of the very few cities

destroyed in Europe completely.

Completely destroyed? Completely destroyed.

So they wipe out all the Ottoman traces?

Only very few monuments here which survived.

I then head to Budapest,

the capital of Hungary,

to come face-to-face with a dervish ruler.

So who was Gul Baba, why was he important?

He was arriving with the Ottoman army

at the end of the conquer of Buda.

So this is the sixteenth century... Absolutely.

..with Suleiman the Magnificent?

Absolutely. Yeah.

And at the very limit of the empire,

at its western most point,

I find out how it all came to an end...

During World War I, they had an alliance with Germany,

which in many ways ends up being there undoing.

They chose the wrong side. Yeah.

..as I explore the Ottoman Empire by train.

I've always loved travelling by train,

no matter where I am in the world.

It's a great way to experience the changing landscape

and to meet people.

Perhaps part of the attraction as well is that it's not always

luxurious or straightforward, as I've learned

travelling through the Balkans on my Ottoman adventure.

Well, it's been a bit of a mission getting from Serbia to Romania.

Not all the railway lines were open,

but finally here I am in Romania and approaching Timisoara.

I'm travelling on Romania's oldest railway line, built in 1854.

It runs from the Serbian border into the city of Timisoara.

This train may not be the most salubrious

that I've taken on this adventure,

and it's certainly not the longest,

but it is rather charming.

Since I set off on this Ottoman train trip,

starting in Adana near the Syrian border in Turkey,

I've travelled 1,400 miles.

And, today, I am arriving in Timisoara.

At first sight, an intriguing city,

which was once an Ottoman stronghold

and is now Europe's city of culture.

The city has the largest array

of architecturally diverse buildings,

in all of Romania.

From Baroque, to Neoclassical to Art Nouveau.

These styles are represented across three major squares.

Union Square...

..Victory Square...

..and Liberty Square...

..earning it the nickname Little Vienna.

Back in the thirteenth century,

Mongols and Tatars invaded the region,

destroying much of Timisoara.

But by 1316, the city had been rebuilt.

Now, that is the oldest historic building in Timisoara.

It dates back to before the Ottoman period,

to the 15th century,

it's called the Huniade Castle,

and it was built by the Hungarian John Huniade.

He was the Hungarian Count of Timisoara.

He kept the Ottomans at bay,

but in the 16th century, they came and took the city,

and this castle became the residence of

the Ottoman Governor, the Beylerbey.

The castle has survived natural disasters,

wars and uprisings.

It became a museum in 1948,

but it's closed today.

It's been undergoing major renovations for nearly 20 years now.

There is no doubt Timisoara has had a chequered past.

And this monument bears testament

to one of its most recent historic moments,

the 1989 Romanian Revolution

that began in this city

when 4,000 people gathered in Victory Square

to protest against the Communist regime,

ultimately leading to its demise

and that of its leader, Nicolae Ceausescu.

This is the Bega Canal.

The first canal built in Romania.

During the 18th and 19th centuries,

it was used to transport goods to Budapest 200 miles away.

I'm searching for the remnants of the city's old fortress walls

via its oldest piazza, Liberty Square,

where I've found something extraordinary.

Ah, look at this fantastic bronze map,

or model, I should say, of the centre of Timisoara.

And what we can see here in the pattern of

the current street is the original shape of the fortress,

and I can see over here that there's this arrow shape that's remaining.

Now, that's the later Habsburg fortress,

and that's where I'm meeting Victor Neumann.

Victor Neumann is a prolific author

on the history and politics of eastern Europe,

and lecturers at the Western University

here in Timisoara.

Victor! Hi! Hi! Alice.

Brilliant! Well, that's arriving in style, isn't it?

Pleased to meet you. Absolutely lovely to meet you.

So we're actually in part of the old fortress here, aren't we?

Yes, this is from 18th century.

It was built by the Hapsburg Empire

after they conquered the city from the Ottomans.

Shall we carry on walking in this direction

and carry on talking about the Ottomans?

Cos I want to understand a little bit more about

why this city was so important to them.

Because it's a strategic point.

First of all, for military reasons. Yeah.

Secondly, for new European perspectives.

Because they like to learn something from the Europeans.

So when did Timisoara become part of the Ottoman Empire?

This is, we're talking the 16th century?

In 1552, and remain inside the Ottoman Empire until 1716.

So the walls we're looking at here, then,

these are not Ottoman, they come a bit later?

Yes, yes. They come in 18th century.

This is a huge construction

from the Austrian Empire during 18th century.

They destroyed the Ottoman Empire citadel,

and they reconstructed completely the city.

Probably it's one of the very few cities destroyed

in Europe completely and reconstructed.

Completely destroyed? Completely destroyed.

So they wipe out all the Ottoman traces?

Only very few, very few monuments here,

which survived from the Ottoman Empire.

In your book, you've got these fantastic

old drawings and maps of the city and of the fortress

during the time of the Ottomans.

Maps from 16th century and 17th century and 18th century.

So this one here, this is the medieval fortress that the...

This is the medieval fortress.

..the Ottomans took. Yes.

And it looks like there's a castle to the south here

and then a heavily defended citadel, it looks like.

It's got another wall here, double wall on the north side.

Yes, yes. It was water behind the fortress.

So much water around... Yes, yes.

And these are all interconnected rivers.

And different canals and channels which exist behind the fortress.

And presumably this is all quite marshy, then, marshy low-lying land.

Yes, yes. A large marsh. Yes, yes. So quite difficult to...

Right, right. ..attack this fortress.

Yes, the Ottomans consider very important the fortress,

and permanently they have many soldiers, many janitors inside.

Janissaries. Janissaries, Janissaries. Yeah, yeah.

which defended the fortress for 164 years in different battles.

It was not only the Hapsburg which like to conquer,

there was also the princes of Transylvania or...

Yeah, they wanted it back. ..other aristocrat,

they like to come back to conquer the city.

And then it develops under the Habsburgs

into this amazing starry fortress. Yeah.

And this is just one of the points, isn't it, that we can still see.

Right, right.

I mean, they've got at least two walls, if not three now.

For construction, they need to destroy the old fortress,

the houses, the mosques... Yeah.

..everything was destroyed and reconstructed.

And where are we? Are we here?

Is this the bastion we're standing at?

Yes, this is the bastion yes, yes, it's here.

That's named after the Empress. Yes, yes.

So the Theresia Bastion.

Empress Theresa was the ruler of the Habsburg Dominions

between 1740 and 1780,

making her the sovereign of Hungary.

Examples of multi-pointed bastion fortresses like this

appear right across Europe at this time,

from Italy to Scotland and beyond.

This design emerged around the time

that gunpowder was introduced into battles.

The pointed walls prevent blind spots

for those being attacked.

You can see from every angle.

The city authorities have embraced the bastion fort symbol

in the most impressive way.

Look at that manhole cover.

That has surely got to be inspired by the Austrian refortification

of the citadel,

with that starburst of a fort,

one of those points could be the Theresea Bastion.

It's not just the bastion that they have in common with Scotland,

it's the weather, too.

But it doesn't deter my detective work

seeking out evidence of the Ottoman Empire.

There's another little hint of Ottoman Timisoara,

this tram stop is the "Statia Printul Turcesc",

The Turkish Prince station.

It has been quite an education

learning about Timisoara's hidden Ottoman past,

but tomorrow I discover that not all has been lost in time.

Romania may not be somewhere you'd immediately associate

with the Ottoman Empire,

and yet, the Ottomans ruled here for nearly two centuries.

But it's as though they never stepped foot in the place.

In Liberty Square, the locals and tourists

come to relax and enjoy the picturesque surroundings

from its cafes.

But almost 400 years ago,

you could have also bathed here.

There was an enormous Turkish baths, known as the Grand Hammam.

Virtually every trace of Ottoman Timisoara has been erased,

apart from this plaque,

which refers to the erection of the Turkish Baths in the 17th century.

While there is nothing left above ground of the baths,

I have found some other Ottoman relics.

You get the feeling there has been an effort to deliberately

bury Ottoman history,

well, that's certainly the case here,

look at these cannons.

I'm lucky enough to be meeting Adriana Gaspar,

who is one of the few archaeologists to have found Ottoman remains.

Adriana. Hello.

Hello!

Oh, I am so pleased to meet you.

Adriana is a pioneer in Romanian archaeology.

She is leading the country's new

desire to discover it's Ottoman past.

You've been involved with many

archaeological excavations here in Timisoara,

so what have you found,

what kind of traces of the Ottomans have you seen?

From the Ottoman period we have so much glazed pottery.

Yeah.

We have jugs with filters because they are used for food.

Another thing was the black ceramic.

Right. We cannot find it here before the Ottomans.

Yeah, so there is a definite change in material culture.

Yes.

The Ottomans in the first years,

firstly they brought here the soldiers, the garrison.

Yeah, yeah.

And they needed to have an Islamic city.

They moved the population from the fortified city to the suburbs.

So the people that were already living here, they moved them out?

Yes, and for being an Islamic city,

they need a place of worship.

They transformed the churches into mosques. Yep.

And the other thing, the most important thing for

an Islamic city was the presence of a bazaar.

Yeah.

This bazaar, for sure, should be found

very close to the public bath and to the main mosque.

Have you found any traces of it,

on any of the excavations you've been involved with?

No. No? Unfortunately, we couldn't.

And even the material, which we found here,

we couldn't find so many coins,

which is very, very strange

because it's in a very crowded place. Yeah.

Tell me what happens after the Ottoman period,

because the Austrians, the Habsburgs, take Timisoara.

So what happened to the Muslim population here, then?

They voluntarily left or were they told to leave?

No. No, they were somehow forced when they left.

Yeah.

When the Ottomans left in 1716,

the Austrians stayed, so they said, you can go,

it's not a problem, but when they left the fortress,

they killed them.

Right. It was like that.

And then under the Austrians,

the city's completely redeveloped,

and the Ottoman influence disappears almost entirely.

We have nothing standing from the Ottoman period. No.

Because the Austrians, when they came here,

they want to build bigger structures,

so they levelled the soil,

and they started to build a wall fortress in a star shape.

Yes, yeah, and so the points, the Theresia Bastion

is one of the points of that star-shaped fortress

that we can still see. Yes.

Yes, it's part of this fortress, yes.

So where are you digging next?

Are you planning anymore excavations?

For now I don't know,

but I have so much material to deal with

from an excavation that took place at the end of 2019.

We found a part of the fortification.

How many pieces of pottery came out of that dig?

1,000.

1,000. Yes.

That's gonna take a while.

Yes, and clay pipes, for example,

maybe there are 300. Yeah.

And I have to deal with the typology,

to date them,

and all this pottery, to take it, to look at it,

to draw it to reconstruct the form of the pottery.

That will take you a while.

Yes.

The Ottomans ruled here for 164 years,

but that phase of history is hard to see in the modern city.

With Adriana and other archaeologists now focusing

on this period, though,

we will come closer to understanding the influence

and impact of the Ottoman Empire in Romania.

It's time for me to say goodbye to Little Vienna

and head to the final destination

on my Ottoman adventure,

Budapest in Hungary.

IN ROMANIAN: A ticket to Budapest.

IN ENGLISH: That was my best Romanian,

but she's talking to me in English.

There should be a train leaving

to Budapest in 20 minutes,

so I'm hoping that this isn't going to take too long.

Er which platform?

What? Which platform?

Platform two.

Platform two, thank you very much. Merci.

From Timisoara, it's a five and a half hour train journey,

160 miles northwest across the border,

to the Hungarian capital.

I'm on my travels again.

Ah, lovely.

This is the last train of the journey.

There has been a station here since 1857,

and at one time, it was a regular stop for the Orient Express.

The original station was bombed in World War II,

and in 1976, this new station was built,

in the soviet style of the time.

I'm travelling on Romania's international tram network,

which covers eight European countries from Germany in the west

to Moldova in the east,

Poland in the north and Bulgaria in the south.

I've been looking for half-hidden traces

of the Ottoman Empire in Europe,

and now I'm on the last leg of my journey.

I'm heading to yet another European city

that was under Ottoman rule for well over 150 years,

but I want to tie up some loose ends.

I want to understand how an empire at its widest

expanded not only into Europe

but around the eastern Mediterranean into Africa,

and then I want to understand how this vast, powerful,

wealthy empire finally came to an end

and what the legacy of the Ottoman Empire is today.

Crossing international borders by train is always intriguing.

With another hundred miles to go before I reach Budapest,

I can't think of a better way to discover

how one country differs to the next.

Well, you can see why the Ottomans wanted this countryside,

this great vast breadbasket,

it's the Hungarian plain,

and it is incredibly fertile

and just full of agricultural wealth.

Look at that, it's just fields

stretching as far as the eye can see.

The other benefit of international train travel

is the buffet car, and I've got a book for company.

Victor, from the fort at Timisoara,

gave me the book he wrote on the city's history.

It might be the last train of the day.

But Walking through Budapest's Keleti Station,

It feels like I'm in an Opera House.

These beautiful frescoes were painted over 100 years ago.

What an introduction to Budapest.

I can't wait to explore more tomorrow.

I've reached the last stop on my train journey

across the Ottoman Empire.

I'm in Budapest,

which straddles the River Danube.

It was once two cities, Buda and Pest.

Buda sits on the higher hills on the west of the Danube

and Pest on the flat plains of the opposite bank.

The Pest side is more populated and industrial,

with more housing, shops and offices than Buda.

The city sits on a fault line between the Buda hills

and the great plain,

which has produced more natural

underground springs than any other city in the world.

I'm crossing the river to find a region in Buda called Kiraly.

Somewhere here is a 450-year-old building,

built by the Ottomans.

These distinctive copper-domed rooftops

form part of the Kiraly Turkish Baths.

I'm told the baths are due to be renovated,

and they were last used as recently as 2020.

It's all shut up for now, but these baths,

the Kiraly Baths, date back to the Ottoman period.

And the Ottomans must have been absolutely delighted

to arrive here in Budapest, in a place

where more than 100 hot springs bubble up from the ground.

Still in Buda on the west side of the Danube,

I'm looking to get a better feel for the city geography.

These are the Castle Gardens,

a 19th century complex for visitors and locals,

famous for their vantage point across the whole city.

A large section of the gardens here had to be rebuilt

in the 1950s after heavy bombardment

in the Second World War.

Buda was conquered by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1541,

and then the Ottomans ruled here for 158 years.

At the close of the 17th century,

the city was claimed by a holy alliance

of Christian European crusaders,

to then become part of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire.

Unlike Timisoara, where there's barely any physical traces

of the Ottomans,

there are some very well preserved historic buildings here.

One such complex is a mausoleum that has

a beautiful garden and meandering pathways.

It's the resting place of Gul Baba,

and I'm hoping to find out more about him

from local tour guide Dalma Czimer.

Dalma. Alice.

Hello, hello,

I have found you in the lavender garden. Yes.

This is gorgeous. Yes.

And also you will find rose and a magnolia garden,

it is remembrance

and an amazing symbol the Turkish and ottoman era.

Because Gul Baba means "roses", it means the "father of roses".

Yes, the father of the roses.

Actually there is a history about

the Ottoman Empire or this period introduced this plant

into the Hungarian area, but it's actually not correct.

There must have been roses here before.

Yes, it was in the Middle Ages.

So who was Gul Baba? Whys he important?

He was arriving with the Ottoman army

at the end of the Conquer of Buda.

So this is sixteenth century? Absolutely.

With Suleiman the Magnificent.

Absolutely, and because Buda was conquered in 1541,

and this elderly man, as we know, he joined the army

as the head of the Turkish monastery.

Ah, so he's a dervish,

he's a dervish religious leader, then?

Yes, yes.

So this must have been one of the first Ottoman tombs

to have been built here.

Actually, we don't know exactly if this was

the first one exactly,

because not that far away,

there was another tomb,

where the monastery was placed,

because the monetarises were really close to the tombs, and...

And that's it. Yes.

So this is so familiar to me now, this octagonal shape

of tombs all the way from Turkey.

Exactly, exactly. And it is from Buda's marble.

Can we go in the tomb? Yeah, sure. Yeah?

So what happened to this tomb

after the Ottomans left or,

you know, after the city was reconquered?

After that it was used by a small cultural group as a chapel.

Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. Yes.

And they added some windows to the tomb as well. Yeah.

And we can see it over the door.

So that's a later edition?

Yes, yes, it was,

but it is also incredibly late, like 200 years.

As you can see,

you can find the symbol of the tomb of Gul Babas here.

So symbolic, there's no remains in there.

There is some remains in there,

but last architectural site was in the late '70s.

And after they don't disturb in the last restoration,

the tomb and the remains.

That's why we always referring as a symbol, like, uh, a coffin.

Because the idea is more important. Yes, absolutely.

And as you can see, it wears the sacred green colour

that is associated with the dervishes

and with the holy life of them. Yeah.

It's interesting, isn't it, because this tomb kind of represents

that history so well,

you know, you've got the dervishes coming

with Suleiman the Magnificent,

expanding his empire and taking Budapest.

Then Budapest becoming Christian again,

the chapel becomes Christian, and now it's a monument,

and its kind of gone back to that original idea. Yeah.

Absolutely.

The beautifully restored tomb and gardens of Gul Baba's mausoleum

are firmly on the tourist trail,

and guides like Dalma are in a newly thriving industry.

But as I near the end of my own journey,

I have plenty of loose ends to tie up.

This afternoon I will be meeting an Ottoman historian

who I'm hoping will help complete the picture.

I'm in in the Hungarian capital, Budapest,

and almost at the end of my Ottoman adventure,

learning about the rise and fall of this formidable Empire.

The best way to get around Budapest is to hop on

one of its picturesque yellow trams

that have been crisscrossing the city

for more than 150 years.

It's one of the biggest tram networks in Europe...

I'm heading to my final destination and my final meeting.

This is Buda Castle.

It was a frontier fort and then power base

for the Ottoman Empire's tenth Sultan,

Suleiman the Magnificent.

From here, the dynasty ruled Hungary.

It was in 1541 that the Ottomans took control here.

But that was 240 years after the first sultan, Osman,

won the Ottomans first battle against Byzantines forces

in northern Turkey.

It was the start of a mammoth campaign

that saw them expand into Europe,

north Africa and the Middle East.

In a turbulent period, some parts of the empire

were lost and then regained.

But it was the beginning of the 20th century

when the empire finally fell.

The Ottomans were evicted from this castle,

and Budapest itself, in 1699,

when they were defeated by the Austrian Empire, the Habsburgs.

The castle is now one of the biggest tourist attractions in Hungary,

and somewhere amidst the hordes of tourists,

I'm hoping to find Mostafa Minawi.

An author and historian on all aspects of the Ottoman Empire.

Hi. Hi!

Welcome to Budapest.

Thank you very much.

This is splendid. Isn't it?

But it doesn't look very old.

It's not. It is actually kind of renovated to death,

a lot of it has been torn down and rebuilt quite a bit of times.

It is pretty though, isn't it?

It is very pretty. Very picturesque.

Very much.

Can we find any Ottoman?

There is quite a little bit of things here and there

that was left or were rebuilt... Yeah.

..but otherwise, they've done

a good job erasing any Ottoman traces in Budapest,

unfortunately, yes.

It seems to be harking back to a kind of glorified medieval past.

Thats what its meant to be, I think.

So, of course, it's in many ways about glorifying Christianity

as the last frontier in front of the Ottomans.

So the ottomans might not be here,

but everything that you see is in many ways in reaction

to Ottoman occupation during a time in which

Buda was the frontier zone.

Right on the edge. Right on the edge.

Buda Castle is a world heritage site

that attracts four million visitors a year,

who come to see its imperial palace,

military museum and the Matthias church,

all contained within its walls.

Mostafa is based in New York,

but as part of a research project,

he lived in Budapest for a year

and came to the castle almost every day.

He knows it well.

Oh, wow, it is super crowded now.

It's heaving.

Hmm.

I think I can take you around other paths where there's

a lot less people, where we can actually talk

and hear each other. Yeah. What do you think?

I think so. Yeah, let's do it.

Let's see what we can find.

Can I show you something? Yeah.

See these cannons?

These are Ottoman, are they?

Well, some of them are, some of them are not,

but they definitely look Ottoman.

They had their cannons here facing that side of the city,

where, of course, they wanted to defend Buda

for the longest time,

and even they are connected the founding story

of the Ottomans taking over Constantinople.

A massive cannon was forged to break through

the walls of the city. Yeah.

And, yeah, interestingly, actually,

the person that forged that cannon was Hungarian,

that was brought into the Ottoman Empire to do exactly that.

His name was Orban.

In many ways, early Ottoman expansion

and cannon go hand in hand.

It was what gave them the upper hand

when they were able to use cannons well before the Europeans did. Yeah.

Just a couple of minutes' walk from the thousands of tourists

around the castle entrance

and we are finding some hidden gems from the city's rich past.

There is something Ottoman here.

There is definitely something Ottoman here,

and it is really the only thing I could find,

at least in the old city of Buda, where this is any trace of

the Ottomans having been here,

and it's a new construction.

There is nobody here, it looks like a tomb,

but in reality it was put here in 1926.

Right, OK, so it's more of a memorial than an actual tomb.

It's a memorial more than anything, exactly.

But it mimics a tomb or a gravestone from the Ottoman period,

this guy, Vezir Abdurrahman Abdi Arnaut Pasha,

means "Albania", so he is Albanian,

and he was the last governor of this province.

It's quite interesting,

because they actually go through the effort of

bringing a turban that signifies the person being a vizier.

They are usually for gravestones of people that were important

enough to have a specific kind of dress code,

particularly their headdress becomes so symbolic.

So the style of the turban tells your status in society.

Very much, yes. And that's kept on the tomb.

Absolutely, it follows you to death.

I've seen this everywhere, all of these grave markers

with turbans on top.

If you are an expert,

and this is early modern period,

if you were an expert in what turbans were

in early modern period,

you would be able to tell immediately

what status that person is.

On my journey from southeast Turkey

through the Balkans into Hungary,

I've really only seen part of the Ottoman Empire.

Here, the Balkans and further on into Europe was the primary,

kind of, focus of the Ottoman Empire,

at least at the beginning. Yeah.

They go into Anatolia a little later,

lose it, win it back.

But what we think of today as the Arab world,

or Arabic speaking majority world,

was only incorporated into the Ottoman Empire

in 1516, 1517-18, so...

Right OK, so around the same time as Hungary.

Indeed, yes, Hungary came in just a few years later under Suleiman.

Budapest was right at the western limit of the empire.

The Ottomans tried to push further to take Vienna

but failed.

Their dreams of expansion had stalled.

They reach as far as Vienna.

They never quite get Vienna. It was a big disaster.

This push to expand continuously, always in a state of war,

if you will, kind of stops.

There are a couple of crises that happen,

there is a huge drought that causes major issues,

there is, of course, the expansion of western powers

into the new world, but they survive them.

So, it's, in many ways, easy to see this kind of

after the golden age Suleiman, things starting to fall apart

and then we think they continue to fall apart

all the way to the end,

but the reality is a lot more complex than that.

But there is modernising. Very much!

There is hope for a new start, a modern start

for, really, a still very multicultural empire.

That all comes to a really quick end during World War I.

They had an alliance with Germany,

which, in many ways, ends up being there undoing.

They choose the wrong side. Yeah.

How does an Ottoman general go through the First World War

and then emerge as a leader of a new Turkish republic?

It's really amazing.

Regardless of what you think about Ataturk

and his policies afterwards,

it's really a fascinating story.

He reasserts

the presence of what will eventually become Turkey,

but the only way he could negotiate

with those powers is by showing that our military power is still there,

and then we can negotiate a different understanding

of at least this territory that becomes Turkey.

Yeah. So Turkey, in many ways, is a success story

with a lot of issues, of course,

but it is a success story out of the Ottoman Empire

if you think about it in terms of an independent nation state

that emerges from the rubble of an empire.

And that was just beautiful, thank you very much.

My pleasure.

Mostafa has certainly helped me to see the bigger picture

and put the Ottoman Empire in context.

I feel like I have only just scratched the surface,

but I also feel very privileged to have been able

to meet and learn from a whole host of experts,

historians and archaeologists

and to delve into our current understanding

of this fascinating empire.

I've travelled over 1,600 miles by train,

visited ten cities, five countries and two continents.

And I have one last journey planned,

An evening scenic cruise along the Danube.

It's the perfect place to come and reflect on my travels.

For an empire that formed in 1299

and lasted for 600 years,

it's the most recent time that sticks mostly in the mind.

Its demise after the First World War one means

that its echoes still resonate today.

It's been fascinating

to see how this empire left its mark on cities,

on culture and politics.

And exploring this history doesn't just improve our knowledge

of the past,

it helps us to understand where we are now.

And perhaps it will even help to guide

where we go in the future.

As far as introductions go, this has been one unforgettable journey.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media