Few sites in Italy are as immediately dramatic as San Leo: a table of rock rising out of the Montefeltro hills with vertical faces on every side, a village on top, and a fortress at its highest point. The single access road climbs through the rock itself. The stronghold was rebuilt in the fifteenth century as a modern artillery fortress, and later became a papal prison — most famously that of Cagliostro, the magician, alchemist and adventurer who ended his life in a cell here. In the village below stand two remarkable early churches, among the oldest religious buildings of the region, with bare stone interiors and reused ancient columns. San Leo also holds a place in Franciscan memory, and in the history of Dante's imagination. Filmed in 4K, with aerial photography that makes the geology of the site legible, the programme unites landscape, military architecture and legend.
