What is the idea behind the show?
Stéphane Bern, an ambassador of French heritage, a royal family specialist, and a man with an unbridled passion for history, has already presented Secrets d’Histoire for the last 15 years. This longstanding show is focused on figures that have gone down in history. For our new series, instead of looking at individuals, we decided to apply the same approach to buildings. We draw up a biography of a place just as we would for a well-known person.
You have taken viewers to places such as the Forbidden City in China, the White House, and the French Senate. What makes a location ideal for the series?
We first focus on seats of power, places in which important decisions have been (and continue to be) taken. All the sites we discuss in the series have been highly influential and have embodied the direction of the world for a certain period. For example, the Forbidden City was home to two Chinese dynasties and has been around for almost 700 years!
Where do you start?
With the first brick, as this alone can tell us so much… Where it was placed reveals a lot about the history of the country in which these structures were built. Take the White House, for example. The Americans chose a marshy area at the meeting point of three states, which later became Washington D.C. Not exactly a premium location! Some people hoped the presidential residence would be in Philadelphia, others in New York, but the people wanted somewhere neutral. And what better than an untouched stretch of land on the border of Maryland?
Next, we try to find out where the bricks or stones are from. The quarry used in the construction of the White House is a few dozen miles away, George Washington knew it well because he had a family home in the area. In fact, he bought the plot in his own name and sold the stones back to the government! We can see that the concept of American-style business is part of the very foundations of the building.
And while the first story told is about stones and bricks, the second is about people: Who worked on these buildings? In the United States, it was a combination of immigrants, free men, and slaves.
How do you breathe new life into places which have existed for so long, and which often have a very dense history?
We take viewers back through history by telling stories. By following the lives of major figures or events, it is easy to cover seventy-year period! In the episode on the White House, for example, we talk about about the mishap with Harry S. Truman and his daughter, whose piano fell through the floor of her bedroom! This incident is a great way to show the decrepitude of the site, and it led to four years of renovation works. Bulldozers were dismantled piece by piece and reassembled in the building to renovate the entire interior without damaging the façade. The builders also dug two cellars (two we are aware of, that is), and the project was a success!
We also tell the story of buildings through people. Theodore Roosevelt was the first president with an eye for political marketing, and made the White House a brand. Before his term in office, it was known as the People’s House!
Who do you interview to recount the history of these walls?
I look for those who have the most accurate stories about each place. There are generally three types of interviewees: historians, insiders (those who have had a unique experience to do with the building), and storytellers who can weave beautiful tales. After identifying them, we travel to the building to film. Of course, nothing is ever that simple and we are sometimes only granted access a few days before the interview. For the episode on the Forbidden City, the pandemic prevented us from going to China and we had to work remotely with a local team.
You also use 3D technology and reconstructions. Could you tell us more?
We do, because it enables us to present the building and the exact location of its rooms so viewers can walk around inside it. For example, everyone wonders where the Oval Office actually is. Unless you have a 3D map, it can be hard to know! We use this technology to remove ceilings, show furniture, and superimpose changes made across different periods, such as the reconstruction between 1930 and 1933 after a huge fire tore through the West Wing. At the time, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was secretly very ill, had the room rebuilt closer to the rose garden to have a private access ramp installed so he could use a wheelchair. As ever, it is the little stories and the people who lived there that help explain the architecture of a place!
Text by: Juliette Démas
Translated from French by: Alexander Uff
What secrets are hiding behind the doors of the Kremlin, the White House, or the Palais Bourbon? Who stalks their corridors? Who sits at their desks? Stéphane Bern and his team offer a visual peek into these places that have made history in the new documentary series Si les murs pouvaient parler.
Interview with Yannick Adam de Villiers, director of several episodes in the series.