Season 10 · Episode 8

Ulisse - The pleasure of discovery: Riccardo Cuor di Leone

In this episode we take a journey into the medieval world of Richard the Lionheart and his attempts to reconquer Jerusalem. We tell stories of valiant and ruthless knights, powerful orders of chivalry. Brave heroes who act in the name of great ideals of faith, honor and loyalty. But what were the real motivations that pushed them to those distant lands? Why did thousands of men, not just knights, cross the Mediterranean for two centuries to reach the Holy Land? The adventures of the crusaders against the infidels are intertwined with other previous myths and span the centuries: Parsifal, Merlin, Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Orlando Furioso, Robin Hood, up to Walter Scott with his Saxon noble Ivanhoe disinherited by his father who left with Richard for the third crusade. Discovering who the ferocious Saldino, sultan of Egypt and supreme commander of the Muslim forces, really was. It wasn't just knights and religious people who left for the Crusades.