Season 17 · Episode 2

Ulisse - The pleasure of discovery: Zar - Gloria e caduta

This episode of "Ulisse" makes us relive the glory and fall of one of the most sumptuous courts of the 19th century: that of the Romanovs. Alberto Angela, in the Royal Palace of Venaria Reale, in Piedmont, talks about this court that reigned over an immense territory without however managing to govern it, closed in its own splendor and impenetrable to the anger and hunger of its people, which would open the doors to the influence of a dubious and discussed character, and still not definitively deciphered: Rasputin. A name inextricably linked to the Romanovs: no one was ever so skilled at bewitching men and women of power without the help of a noble title and with a very limited education. Who was? A healer? A boaster? And what were the relations with the imperial family? Thanks to historical re-enactments and a documentary we tell the parable of a family and an Empire, until the dawn of the First World War.