Monuments to Eternity (1/21)

Monuments to Eternity (1/21)

No European city has such an intimate relationship with death as Vienna. What backdrop could be more fitting for Dieter Moor's stories about some of the most important necropolises on our planet? The crypt of St. Michael's Church, the Central Cemetery and the Funeral Museum are only a few of the places on Dieter Moor's guided tour to the cities for the dead. The death cult has produced some of the most magnificent buildings. In the most diverse places on this earth we find tombs that grant insight into very different cultures. Yet there was one thing they were all aware of: death lasts longer than life. Traces of the death cult and its sacrificial rites can already be found in the Stone Age: Stonehenge in southern England and the tomb Maes Howe on the British Orkney Islands bear witness to this. Nowadays the pyramids of Egypt are the testament set in stone of one of the first civilisations of humankind. When the dynasties of Egyptian civilisation had already faded into oblivion, the Nabataeans in present-day Jordan discovered that stones were imperishable. In Petra they built magnificent tombs for the dead. And one of the most famous World Heritage Sites in China, the Terracotta Soldiers of Xian, is a tomb. Since 2,200 B.C.E. these soldiers have been guarding the grave of the first Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. The Taj Mahal - the marble mausoleum - was commissioned by the Indian Mughal Emperor Schah Jahan in 1651 for his favourite wife Mumtaz Mahal. When she died, he was inconsolable and had this splendid mausoleum constructed of red sandstone and marble - a masterpiece of Indo-Islamic art... 


The imagery of the various necropolises was shot with the utmost care and precision on 35mm film and comes from the raw footage of the series "Treasures of the World - Heritage of Mankind" which is devoted entirely to the Cultural and Natural Heritage of UNESCO.