Two hours and twenty minutes without a single cut. No second camera, no drone to break the continuity, no editing to guide the gaze. With Ulysses – The pleasure of discoveryAlberto Angela signs one of the most audacious operations ever attempted on television: telling the Palace of Versailles through a single, uninterrupted 140-minute sequence.
View this post on Instagram
The special, entitled Versailles in long shotwill be broadcast this evening 2 March on Rai 1 at 9.30pm and promises to redefine the way of doing cultural dissemination. The idea comes from a simple and radical intuition: if the palace is a living organism, then it must be explored without fragmenting it. The result is a continuous journey that gives the viewer the real dimension of the spaces, the relationship between the rooms, the vertigo of the perspectives.
View this post on Instagram
Inside the heart of power
The camera follows Angela through monumental staircases, golden antechambers, corridors that open onto private rooms rarely accessible to the public. Not only the famous Gallery of Mirrors, but also more intimate environments, full of political tensions and personal passions.
The figures of Louis XIV, architect of a system of power based on etiquette and entertainment, come back to life; Louis XV, witness to the first creaks of absolutism; Louis XVI and above all Marie Antoinette, told beyond the black legend. Her restored rooms show a more complex woman than revolutionary propaganda has conveyed. Among the evocative environments, the cabinet linked to Count Hans Axel von Fersen stands out, a discreet but central presence in the sentimental chronicles of the court.
View this post on Instagram
The daily life behind the gold
The special is not limited to architectural magnificence. At the center is everyday life: how immense halls were heated in the middle of winter, what rules marked official meals, how courtiers and favorites dressed. The court emerges as a permanent theater where politics, fashion and seduction intertwine. Among the surprises, also a dress made by Milena Canonero for the film Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola, exhibited in the queen’s bedroom: a visual dialogue between cinema and history that amplifies the charm of the story.
A technical and narrative challenge
Created in collaboration with the Établissement public du château de Versailles, the project involves historians, curators and re-enactors to restore authenticity to every detail. The choice of the longest sequence shot ever made for world TV is not just technical virtuosity: it is a statement of method. No fragmentation, but total immersion.
With this special, Ulysses – The pleasure of discovery transforms the visit to Versailles into a fluid and enveloping experience. Not a show to be observed from a distance, but a walk into History, where splendor coexists with shadows and the past breathes again before the eyes of the spectator.
You might also be interested in:
