European Tales of Mystery and Intrigue

National Geographic visits unearthed Roman theaters, medieval streets, and secret tunnels, bringing new light to Florence's lesser-known, dark history. Art detective and National Geographic Fellow Maurizio Seracini reveals history using a thermocamera to reveal long-lost architectural layers in some of the city's most famous landmarks.

Cannibalism has long been considered a dark chapter in man's history. Yet we think of it only as isolated occurrences. Now a Neolithic burial pit in Germany, found filled with expertly butchered human remains, challenges those assumptions. Archaeologists have never seen anything like it-the deeper they dig, the more bizarre the scene becomes. National Geographic joins an international team of experts as they reopen the earth to understand violent events as they played out seven thousand years ago.

Scattered across the island of Sicily, beneath picturesque churches, are thousands of mummified bodies. And most mysterious of all is one of the last to be enshrined: she's known as the "sleeping beauty"-Rosalia Lombardo. A child barely two years old when she died nearly a century ago, Rosalia's corpse remains flawlessly preserved. Now, for the first time, a scientific team of mummy hunters is on the case, unearthing hundreds of Sicily's miraculous dead, exploring how this baffling culture of mummification could operate within the Catholic Church itself, and finally, revealing the secret formula behind Rosalia's perfect preservation.

During excavation for the deepest submerged tunnel in the world, engineers in Istanbul uncovered a hidden past: a preserved ancient harbor. It is the biggest maritime discovery in history, and to date, more than 30 shipwrecks from the Byzantine era have been recovered. With new findings every day-including stone foundations from a settlement dating back 8,000 years-construction of the tunnel has come to a halt, and the delay is costing the engineers millions. Now, National Geographic goes on site to one of the largest archaeological excavations ever undertaken and grants viewers behind-the-scenes access to this heated battle between modernizers and historians.

Did Romanov Princess Anastasia survive a Bolshevik firing squad or did she and her brother Crown Prince Alexis perish with their father, Tsar Nicholas II, before another firing squad in 1918? The chance find of human remains in a Siberian forest brings forensic anthropologistDr.Anthony Falsetti to in search of the truth. Marshalling DNA, ballistics and the very latest forensic analysis, an international team works to dispel the greatest myth of the 20th century and tell a real story more remarkable than any fiction.