The Cathedrals of Steam - Europe's Railway Stations

- Season 1

(2018)

One of Europe's the most important train stations is also the youngest of Paris. In 1900 France's capital is preparing for the World Expo and is busy building: the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais, the bridge Alexandre III and the Gare d'Orsay. The railway company PLM seizes the opportunity to offers itself the Gare de Lyon - a proud magnificent building in the Belle-Epoque style. A monument of railway architecture with a 100-meter-long facade, decorated with allegories and a 64-meter-high clock tower. A copy of London's Big Ben. Inside the station a splendid restaurant...

A stone mountain rises in the middle of the city of Milan. It's train station Milano Centrale - has been built over 25 years and became a cathedral of travel. The monumental building is characterized by two eras: monarchy and fascism. Traces of these political systems can still be found at the end of track 21. Like the "sala reale" - the royal waiting room of the Savoy king. Taking a closer look one recognizes the signs of the subsequent rule of Benito Mussolini, a swastika taken in the wooden parquet of the waiting room. For a long time it was hidden under a huge ...

Antwerpen Centraal is a jewel in the "city of diamonds". Its gigantic dome reminds of the Pantheon in Rome. That is why it is named railway cathedral by the residents of the city. It is no coincidence that the palatial building was considered as the stony manifestation of the emerging colonial power. Even if King Leopold II referred to it as a "petite belle gare" ("a beautiful small station"). Wall to wall with the station lies Antwerp's green heart - the Zoological garden. Here the Okapis bear testimony to the claim of the Belgian Kingdom to be a world empire. In the...

Gustav Eiffel was already impressed by Budapest - the Hungarian capital of the former Danube monarchy. Even more when his office won the competition for the concourse of glass of the Nyugati Pályaudvar in 1874. With over 6000 square meters and 25 meters height it used to be the fifth biggest train station of the world, and for many years Europe's most modern one. Today the Austrian-Hungarian Train station cathedral is the only one that was barely modernized since her conception. Filmmaker Jeremy JP Fekete rummages in the almost forgotten corners of the old-worthy ...

The station St Pancras is the symbol of the great "Railway-Mania" of the industrial age. It was built for the second World Expo of London in 1862. The needed ground for the construction was gained on the slum and church land next to St Pancras church. The dead in the cemetery were simply transferred to another resting place. The new building is a different kind of "cathedral" - made of cast iron and glass. Just the concourse with its 74 meters broad arc is a masterpiece of architecture. The church architect George Gilbert Scott, back then already a celebrity, won the ...