In this the first episode Clark - travelling from Byzantine Ravenna to the Celtic Hebrides, from the Norway of the Vikings to Charlemagne's chapel at Aachen - tells his story of the Dark Ages, the six centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Clark concludes the series with a discussion of the materialism and humanitarianism of the 19th and 20th centuries. He visits the industrial landscape of 19th century England and the skyscrapers of 20th century New York. He argues that the achievements of the engineers and scientists—such as Brunel and Rutherford—have been matched by those of the great reformers like Wilberforce and Shaftesbury.
Clark talks of the harmonious flow and complex symmetries of the works of Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart and the reflection of their music in the architecture of the Rococo churches and palaces of Bavaria.
Clark takes the viewer back to the Reformation—to the Germany of Albrecht Dürer and Martin Luther and the world of the humanists Erasmus, Montaigne, and Shakespeare.
Clark tells of the sudden reawakening of European civilization in the 12th century. He traces it from its first manifestations in the Cluny Abbey to the Basilica of St Denis and finally to its high point, the building of Chartres Cathedral in the early 13th century.
Beginning at a castle in the Loire and then traveling through the hills of Tuscany and Umbria to the cathedral baptistry at Pisa, Clark examines both the aspirations and achievements of the later Middle Ages in 14th century France and Italy.
Visiting Florence, Clark argues that European thought gained a new impetus from its rediscovery of its classical past in the 15th century. He also visits the palaces at Urbino and Mantua and other centers of (Renaissance) civilization.
Here Clark takes the viewer back to 16th century Papal Rome—noting the convergence of Christianity and antiquity. He discusses Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci; the courtyards of the Vatican; the rooms decorated for the Pope by Raphael; and the Sistine Chapel.
Again in the Rome of Michelangelo and Bernini, Clark tells of the Catholic Church's fight against the Protestant north—the Counter-Reformation—and the Church's new splendour symbolised by the glory of St. Peter's.
Clark tells of new worlds in space and in a drop of water—worlds that the telescope and microscope revealed—and the new realism in the Dutch paintings of Rembrandt and others artists that took the observation of human character to a higher stage of development in the 17th century.
Clark discusses the Age of Enlightenment, tracing it from the polite conversations of the elegant Parisian salons of the 18th century to subsequent revolutionary politics, the great European palaces of Blenheim and Versailles, and finally Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.
Belief in the divinity of nature, Clark argues, usurped Christianity’s position as the chief creative force in Western civilization and ushered in the Romantic movement. Clark visits Tintern Abbey and the Alps and discusses the landscape paintings of Turner and Constable.
Clark argues that the French Revolution led to the dictatorship of Napoleon and the dreary bureaucracies of the 19th century, and he traces the disillusionment of the artists of Romanticism—from Beethoven's music to Byron's poetry, Delacroix's paintings, and Rodin's sculpture.
Sir David Attenborough talks about the commissioning and production of the series