The Parthenon has served as a church, a fortress, an ammunition dump and the model for countless banks, courthouses and museums across the world...

It has been shot at, exploded, set on fire, rocked by earthquakes, looted for its magnificent sculptures and subjected to restorations that have been termed "catastrophic." Despite so much abuse and renown as an icon of Western civilization, the question of how the Parthenon was built has been largely ignored until recently. NOVA presents SOME intriguing questions...how did the ancient Athenians build their great temple with incredible precision in a mere eight years? How did they manage to incorporate subtle, eye-pleasing distortions into the Parthenon's layout, such that there are few straight lines or right angles to be seen? And, most baffling of all, how did they accomplish all this without an overall building plan or blueprint, which would be indispensable to a modern architect? NOVA: SECRETS OF THE PARTHENON...8pm





In 2009 a team of marine archeologists, carrying out a sonar survey of the seabed around the remote Italian island of Ventotene, made an astonishing discovery. The wrecks of five ancient Roman ships were found in pristine condition, each one fully laden with exotic goods. Remarkably, much of the cargo remained exactly as the ancient Roman crews had loaded it, suggesting that these ships had not capsized but had gone to the bottom of the sea intact and upright. What happened to these ancient ships? What were they carrying and why had they traveled to this remote, rocky island in the first place? "Lost Ships of Rome" follows the team as they explore the sites in detail, salvage artifacts and piece together the history of the ships and why they were lost at Ventotene 2,000 years ago.