Bettany also hikes up Mount Nemrut to a 2,000-year-old mausoleum and visits Zeugma, an ancient Roman city submerged in the river.

Bettany also explores the deep World War Two tunnels and the Lascaris War Rooms, clambering down amongst tree roots, where hundreds of families sheltered through the war, finding theirkitchen plates and bottles, and prayers — remnants of a time of incredible endurance.

Bettany is also granted special permission to film at the Topkapi Palace, known as the jewel of the Ottoman Empire. They are the first international team allowed to film this staggering seat of Ottoman Power for years. The magnificent citadel’s extensive gardens reveal the Sultan’s passion for flowers, exotic animals and hand painted Iznik tiles. Bettany will discover how the Mediterranean island of Malta is a cultural hub laden with some of the world's most precious treasures in a later episode of Bettany Hughes' Treasures of the World. She'll show that Malta was where civilisations from East, West, North and South have met and cross-fertilised!

Bettany Hughes reveals some amazing facts about ancient history. (Image credit: Channel 4) Bettany Hughes' Treasures of the World air date and trailerFor the first episode, Bettany Hughes is in Greece uncovering the stories of Olympia, the birthplace of the original Olympic Games (see picture below), and Aegae the birthplace of Alexander the Great and the biggest palace in the whole of classical Greece. There’s also a trip to the Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus, the world's very first health spa. Bettany and her team are the first to be welcomed in to film the incredible underground temple the Hypogeum. A burial place for up to 7000 individuals, where Bettany holds a replica of a 5,500 year old figurine of a fecund woman, representing the transition between life and death. Before a major restoration project starts, Bettany is invited to explore and film in Queen Elizabeth II’s and Prince Philip’s romantic hideaway the Villa Guardamangia. It's a 'royal love nest' house rarely entered and rarely filmed in yet it's where the couple were said to have found real happiness. She also visits the Basilica Cistern, the revolutionary sixth century water reservoir built under Instanbul's streets, and takes us on a tour of her favourite building on Earth – Hagia Sophia, which was completed in 537 as the vast Christian cathedral of what was then Constantinople before it became a mosque when Ottoman Turks took the city in 1453. "It’s one of the wonders of the medieval world and it changed architecture forever,’ says Bettany. ‘It was built in record time – just five years, ten months and four days – and the dome is still one of the biggest in the world, surviving over 1000 earthquakes!" Bettany Hughes at the vast amphitheatre at the Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus. (Image credit: Channel 4) Bettany Hughes in later episodes of Treasures Of The World...