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00:00It's the ultimate real-life Da Vinci code.
00:16I can't talk about that.
00:18Buried somewhere inside these centuries-old walls, a priceless Leonardo Da Vinci masterpiece
00:23may be hiding.
00:24If it proves to be there, it would have been, you know, just centimeters away from us this
00:29whole time.
00:31Lost for almost 500 years, now a team of scientists sets out on the world's greatest treasure
00:38hunt.
00:39To find the missing mural, they may have to drill through another precious masterpiece,
00:48unlock centuries of dusty clues, and face a tidal wave of global outrage.
00:56With only two weeks to find their long-lost prize, it's a race to the finish.
01:01Every single time they drill in, they find a new surprise.
01:03Wait!
01:04We don't have power.
01:05We don't have power.
01:06Filled with unimaginable heartbreak.
01:09It's fascinating.
01:11And just possibly, glory beyond their wildest dreams.
01:16Look.
01:17Look at this.
01:18It looks like paint.
01:19This is definitely the most immersed I've ever gotten into a story before.
01:34National Geographic photographer Dave Yoder has been chasing this story for almost five
01:40years.
01:41The story, it's got mystery.
01:43It's got art.
01:44It's got eccentric characters.
01:47The thought that there could be a loss of Leonardo behind one of these huge murals in this vast
01:55room.
01:56It's a fascinating mystery.
01:57And it's centuries old.
01:59The great hall of the world-famous Palazzo Vecchio.
02:03Five hundred years ago, Leonardo da Vinci painted a massive mural on a wall in this room.
02:09But within 60 years, the hall was remodeled.
02:13The Leonardo mural covered up and painted over by another Renaissance master.
02:18The exact location of the hidden Leonardo has been a mystery for centuries.
02:23Look at the size and the length of these walls.
02:27They are huge.
02:28So it could have been located anywhere.
02:31That's what Dave wants to see.
02:33Since the very first day of my research, the goal was to find where the battle on Ghiaati
02:41could have been painted and if it's still there.
02:46Art investigator Dr. Maurizio Serracini is convinced he knows where to look.
02:51High up on one of the frescoes, he's found a cryptic inscription.
02:54I placed the scaffold just over this panel, looking straight in front of me, I saw this
03:02flag.
03:03Two words written on it.
03:05Check or throw, search or find.
03:07I mean, why would you write something like that?
03:10All the way up there, nobody can see it.
03:13Is that a coincidence?
03:16He's scanned every inch of the room with lasers, thermal imaging cameras, radar, hunting for anomalies
03:24in these walls that could tell him where the Leonardo is buried.
03:30After 36 years of hunting, he's finally had a landmark break in the investigation.
03:34We just scanned all six panels and we did find that air gap, right there.
03:42How come you will find just a tiny air gap behind the wall, only in that area, but nowhere
03:49else?
03:51Signs of a hidden air gap, exactly where decades of research have been telling him to look.
03:56Is there a Leonardo inside?
03:58Now, the final chapter.
04:01The mayor of Florence has directed Serracini to prove the mural is there once and for all,
04:08and to do the unimaginable.
04:10So they do top level on the right, top level in the center.
04:14Drill holes through the priceless frescoes on the surface and look inside the wall.
04:19This hole got me in the mural.
04:22More than extras, I've been given a deadline, and it's coming very soon.
04:29The city has given him only two weeks to find the painting, and it will be an uphill fight.
04:35This is the story no one has seen.
04:39Captured by National Geographic's cameras, embedded inside the controversial operation.
04:45Okay, ascolte.
04:47I don't ascolte.
04:48Lovede, lovede.
04:49I will go up with the restorer and with the city architect.
04:53We're showing the restorer where we need to have the fresco removed.
04:58So they'll tell us, oh, okay, I can work with this, or no, you know, I can't remove a good piece of the fresco here.
05:08This is the area where Saracini believes the Leonardo is hiding.
05:15But the fresco on top of it won't be easy to remove.
05:18You can't just take off the fresco and look for this painting.
05:22It's painted directly onto the wall.
05:25Five centuries old, this masterpiece by Giorgio Vasari is cracked, fragile, and extremely delicate.
05:33A strong vibrational shock could trigger a disaster.
05:39You can't just take a pickaxe to it and look for Leonardo.
05:45Saracini has developed a plan to explore behind the wall.
05:50It sounds deceptively simple.
05:52Lift out a piece of the precious mural on the surface, drill a hole through the brick behind,
05:57and insert a videoscopic probe to see if the Leonardo is there.
06:04But this hall is a national treasure, and a tourist attraction for millions.
06:12Four museum officials, drilling into this masterpiece is controversial,
06:17and they're reluctant to give a green light.
06:20So we still need his permission?
06:22Basically, that's how it works.
06:24To have high stakes?
06:26As usual.
06:28The situation's really tense right now.
06:30This project's supposed to be barreling ahead.
06:32We came here thinking that the permission was already in place.
06:36We show up, and that does not appear to be the case.
06:41So, no idea what's going to happen next.
06:48For photographer Dave Yoder, figuring out what the missing Leonardo might look like
06:52is a critical part of his assignment.
06:55Before the mural was covered up, other artists copied the painting.
07:00And some of those copies still survive, deep in museum vaults around the globe.
07:05This is the copy that's in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
07:17Nobody could do horses like Leonardo could, and you can see this.
07:21It was the only battle scene that Leonardo was ever known to have painted.
07:27He captures this clash, this incredible melee of fury, this knotted ball of horses and men.
07:36Leonardo called it the beastly madness, and it just works, and it's perfect.
07:45But all these copies are curiously imperfect, and those imperfections are a critical clue.
07:52It's well documented that Leonardo never finished the Battle of Anghiati.
07:57And I think that there are clues in the copies as to what he did not finish.
08:02And in the Hague copy, the writer on the right, the body is only lightly sketched in,
08:08but then the head is very well detailed like the rest of the writers.
08:12In this copy, it's the same way, except even more pronounced.
08:17The writer is gone, just missing.
08:20The copies consistently outline a shape for what Leonardo painted on the wall before he abandoned it.
08:25You have a laser measure?
08:27But the air gap in Serracini's radar scan of the wall covers a huge area,
08:33and the da Vinci could be anywhere behind it.
08:37They'll only be permitted a limited number of drill attempts.
08:42Knowing how big Leonardo's mural actually was will be critical to picking those targets.
08:49While the copies Yoder has studied outline how much of the mural Leonardo might have painted
08:59before he abandoned it, none of the copies are useful in determining the scale of the mural.
09:06All of them are a different size.
09:10There's one relic that could give us a clue as to the size of the original painting.
09:15It's kept in a secure vault deep in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England.
09:21It's called the Head of a Warrior.
09:23The curators have agreed to take the precious drawing out of storage
09:27and out of its sealed frame to allow Yoder to photograph it.
09:39It's interesting because it's just of a single warrior's head,
09:44and it's a different size than any of the other copies.
09:48There's volume coming out of that mouth, just bellowing something.
09:53It's strange that an artist would work right up to the edge of a sheet like that.
09:57They would have given themselves a little bit of space,
09:59but it is very cut out around the shape of the hat over there,
10:03and over here it's been cut off.
10:05It's just a fragment.
10:08And if just the head is this big,
10:10the rest of the drawing would have been a staggering size.
10:13It would be really unusual for someone to cut a piece of paper to this size
10:17and unusually shaped as well.
10:21This is the head which we've got in the Ashmolean drawing.
10:27Martin Kemp is perhaps the world's leading Leonardo expert and authenticator.
10:33Kemp has studied this drawing extensively
10:35and found evidence that this is more than just another copy.
10:40So it's an object of terrific historical status.
10:43But why is this head so large?
10:47To find the answer, they'll have to work in the dark
10:50with invisible infrared light.
10:54Is graphite absorb infrared?
10:56Ah, yes.
10:57Yeah, yeah.
10:58Yeah, this area is the best one, isn't it?
11:01In the images, the experts spot the vital clue.
11:06Small, barely visible charcoal dots along the outlines.
11:11So the fact we can see some means that it would have been all over the whole thing.
11:16Yeah, that's pretty nice.
11:18The charcoal dots are traces of Leonardo himself.
11:21Traces of a stencil technique that link it to his full-scale paper layout of the mural,
11:26the cartoon.
11:28It is a very accurate, literally point-by-point record of the original cartoon.
11:35The dots which you get are then joined up to produce this drawing.
11:40This now gives us the precise dimensions of part of the cartoon,
11:44what the size of the whole thing was.
11:47Seems to be consistent.
11:48Yeah, the mean is coming out about 15, isn't it?
11:51Yeah.
11:52This head gives them the dimensions for what Leonardo painted on the wall.
11:57It's compelling to think that this was once directly in front of the original
12:01and that I'm seeing what somebody else saw almost 500 years ago through his eyes.
12:07A critical piece of the puzzle has fallen into place.
12:12But their attempts to uncover the lost Leonardo will soon thrust them into the heat of global controversy.
12:22In Florence, the team projects the dimensions of Leonardo's mural onto the wall they plan to explore.
12:29It's big.
12:32I like that.
12:35It really gives you the feeling.
12:38It's a good shot.
12:40Combining these proportions with the radar images of the hidden air gap,
12:44Saracini and his team of graduate students carefully pick out 14 ideal drill sites
12:50where they think they'll have the best chance to find the mural.
12:54If we have just 14 shots, 14 bullets to speak, 14 chances, and that's all.
13:03It looks big, but then we are hitting with bullets of two centimeters in diameter.
13:09Okay?
13:10It seems to me that at least we should have a fair chance to hit the target with at least
13:17two, if not three, in some cases four of these holes.
13:21But permission to drill is still pending.
13:28And there are only two days left until the drilling operation is set to start.
13:34At Saracini's lab, the team does a dry run of the plan.
13:37It might be a little small.
13:38Okay.
13:39What will this do for today?
13:40I'll look slightly comical.
13:4238.
13:43We are working on a scaffold.
13:44We cannot move around too much.
13:46And we have very limited amount of time.
13:49So we better know what we are doing and who is doing what.
13:52Now go.
13:53Do it slowly.
13:54There will be no room for error.
14:02Every kink has to be ironed out.
14:04Stop for a second.
14:05Take it out.
14:08This noise is not exactly very inviting.
14:10People would think that we are hammering the wall.
14:13Take the vacuum out.
14:14Come on.
14:15Let's get it.
14:16Let's get it done.
14:17We are in through the brick.
14:19And we are in between the air gap, which is between the two walls.
14:24Stick the endoscope in it.
14:26Pick it and let me center a little.
14:28Okay.
14:29Have you ever used an endoscope before?
14:31A couple weeks ago when we got the first endoscope, Ben and I were practicing with it.
14:36But that's the only time.
14:38It's sticking on something.
14:39I don't know if I want to try to get it unstuck.
14:41Two days from now, they'll have to do this.
14:43For real.
14:45Drilling through a fragile masterpiece with anxious museum officials second-guessing every
14:50move they make.
14:51Of course.
14:52Come on.
14:53Come on.
14:54The final day of prep.
15:00A massive scaffold rises in front of the Vasari masterpiece.
15:06In seven days, it will have to be dismantled.
15:09The clock is ticking.
15:14The scaffold of this magnitude in the whole of the 500 has never been up.
15:18Not in living memory.
15:20You can imagine how much this raised the curiosity of the media.
15:25But the project has been ordered to proceed under a news blackout.
15:29No one is to speak to the press.
15:32Only one thing still remains.
15:34Permission to drill through the priceless masterpiece.
15:37We are waiting for the approval of the project to start the operation.
15:46There's no permission here.
15:48But I don't doubt that the approval will be here tomorrow.
15:55But the next morning, a development that could change everything.
16:00At the request of the city, this was supposed to be, like, top secret.
16:04The story has hit the press.
16:09It's really, really frustrating.
16:15Just basically, you know, BS.
16:20A front page story is not good news for the project.
16:24The museum's superintendent has gone public.
16:27And she isn't giving permission for the operation to drill through the Vasari mural.
16:33I can't imagine how Rezi is going to respond to this.
16:36It's not exactly good news.
16:38According to what she said to the journalist,
16:41from November 27th to the 3rd of December,
16:46an inspection will be done to find an air gap.
16:52And then she says,
16:53L'esperanza ci sono.
16:55We have hopes.
16:57So, you see, there is no intent to allow us to do our job.
17:05Some authorities are pretending that we are at a very early preliminary state.
17:10And therefore, we are setting up that huge scaffold just to have a look.
17:16Well, we're not here to just have a look.
17:19There is a well-defined project.
17:22Everybody has been informed.
17:24So, it's time now to move.
17:26And we need to move fast.
17:28I'm going back to prepare for the 4 o'clock meeting.
17:30Okay, yes.
17:31He's just coming to see the drilling apparatus
17:33and to look at data.
17:35A team of restorers from the museum is dispatched
17:37to inspect every piece of Maurizio's plan.
17:40We thought by now we'd be spending most of our time
17:43working in the Salone as opposed to working in here,
17:45but it hasn't quite worked out that way.
17:48I really felt for Maurizio at that point.
17:53He's caught between a rock and a hard place.
17:56The city won't budge on the timeline,
17:58and the restorers aren't wrong.
18:00You can't rush into this and risk damaging a Vasari
18:03just to look for Leonardo.
18:05Okay.
18:06The zero.
18:07Just advance to the zero position first.
18:25Okay.
18:26The zero.
18:27Just advance to the zero position first.
18:32Serashini has got this drilling machine, probably it's the best drilling machine all over the
18:48world, but it's not the best machine for this case, because there was too much vibrations
18:59and also the drill bit, it was too big. The risk to do damage using that machine was too high.
19:15On the scaffold, the inspection is also not going well.
19:19The Oberfuge della Pia Torradura is here and they're examining the wall and this time it's ultra-sensitive.
19:27Is there a new problem today? Maurizio is very nervous.
19:31The 14 sweet spots Serashini has pre-selected are suddenly in jeopardy.
19:36Originally Maurizio had a wish list of 14 holes that were his prime spots that he'd like to investigate,
19:44but it doesn't look like he's going to get that. In fact, it doesn't look like he's going to get any of them.
19:50Can you just give me a quick summary? No, no, no.
19:53The clock is ticking, and no one knows if the project will move forward.
19:59It's Thanksgiving Day. The project is at a standstill. And I found a turkey.
20:10Our turkey looks just like this that we're going to have tonight.
20:14So we're having a Thanksgiving in Italy.
20:18So where are the people that were looking at the wall today?
20:21They were from the Oberfuge della Pietra Dura.
20:24It sounded like they were basically evaluating the wall to determine whether the wall was in a condition to be drilled like that.
20:32And, you know, why that's happening at this later date, you know, it's kind of scary.
20:38What I'd like to hope is that there's enough momentum now that it really can't be stopped.
20:43And, you know, don't worry about what you can't control.
20:45So I'm just going to make dinner, and I'm just going to have Thanksgiving and have some fun,
20:51and just don't worry about it. Right?
20:54I mean, it's not like we're suffering. You know, we're in Florence.
20:57Cheers.
20:58Florence.
20:59Then, Yoder has a sudden breakthrough on a different front.
21:02Wow.
21:03Yeah, I can't believe it. Didn't even ask.
21:04A lead to finding the most famous copy of the mural, the Tavola Doria, is heating up.
21:09Here, release what you don't have.
21:11Unlike other copies, it's in full color.
21:14And examining it may prove critical to identifying what they find behind the wall.
21:20But the mysterious thing about the Tavola Doria is that nobody seems to know where it is.
21:25It hasn't been seen in public since 1939, and its owners are a mystery.
21:34I've heard rumors that it's in Switzerland. I've heard that it's in Japan.
21:38It's an unknown entity at this point.
21:44It's just been listed as missing. Nobody knows who owns it. Nobody knows where it is.
21:49And yet, it's considered probably the most important copy of the Battle of Anghiari,
21:55because of its faithfulness to what people think the original was when Leonardo left it on the wall.
22:01But there's a German professor who calls himself the spiritual owner of the painting,
22:07who may know where it is and how to get to it.
22:11He's dedicated decades to the Tavola Doria.
22:14Hopefully, I'll be able to get some more information from him.
22:18Yeah, that's it. Dr. Peele.
22:20Hello, Peele.
22:21Hi, nice to meet you.
22:22Nice to meet you. Welcome here.
22:24My goodness.
22:27Look at this.
22:29Yeah.
22:30On a light box, a high-resolution reproduction of the mysterious oil painting.
22:35And the painting itself is where?
22:38The whereabout of the painting is documented in this photo with the Japanese women.
22:45But the whereabout in Japan is, for me, unknown.
22:51But it's still owned by the same group.
22:54I don't like to speak about this group.
22:57I know the identity. I know the person.
23:00What is the problem with that?
23:03The problem is the Yakutsa. You know the Yakutsa, the Japanese mafia.
23:09Do you have an agreement with them?
23:11I have no agreement. No, no, no. I am free.
23:14But I fear complications for my own life.
23:17So you're afraid of repercussions if you say who they are?
23:20Yes, they are.
23:21Yes, yes, yes, yes.
23:23Piel will say nothing further about where the painting is, or who has it.
23:28But he has other secrets to reveal.
23:30The Tavola Doria can't be a copy.
23:32Piel is convinced that Leonardo never succeeded in painting a mural on the wall.
23:37That Leonardo tinkered with a disastrous experimental technique that failed.
23:42Bring into the mural painting the qualities of oil painting.
23:47And that instead, the Tavola Doria is the famous Leonardo everyone is looking for.
23:52And the colour was running down.
23:56And so this painting was ruined.
23:59So when they look behind that wall in the Salone di Cinquecento, what do you think they will find?
24:04You will find no remnants of an artefact.
24:09Yeah, but the painting will not be there anymore.
24:11No, no, no. This is my conviction. But I am not a god.
24:15He's got an interesting theory that is not completely irrational.
24:27Knowing if Piel's prophecy is true can only be determined by looking behind the wall.
24:33And in Florence, getting approval to drill even a single hole into the Vizzari is at a standstill.
24:54Christina Acciadini appeared suddenly. It's the first time I've seen her here.
24:58She is one of the people with authority over whether this project happens or not.
25:08I don't know what it means, but she was definitely in a heated discussion with the people from the Upefice della Piazzatura.
25:20Suddenly, a break in the ice.
25:23Acciadini has changed her mind.
25:25She gives a green light to drilling.
25:28We have the indications that we're going to start doing something tonight.
25:34What exactly that means, I don't even know.
25:38There will be seven holes.
25:40But there's a catch.
25:42They won't necessarily be where Seracini wants to look.
25:46The sites, the areas we choose previously, basically just went up in there.
25:51The holes will be in areas chosen by the restorers.
26:00Old patches or cracked areas where drilling will do no new damage to the mural.
26:06It might sound the same, but it's not. There are reasons.
26:09I mean, it's not that I wake up in the morning and say, let's do it here.
26:14But I think it's not their fault.
26:16This has to be made clear.
26:18These guys are simply doing what they think is the best way to preserve the mural.
26:23From now on, we are left with improvisation and luck.
26:34But with Seracini's preselected best bets out the window, the team needs more to go by.
26:40And the answer could be lurking here, deep in a secure facility, off limits to the public.
26:461691 to 1689, a lot of old stuff.
26:56Deep in the archives of Florence, Dave Yoder is hunting for a clue to finding Leonardo's hidden mural.
27:03The miniature archives are run over.
27:05Palace records dating to the time of Leonardo.
27:07Somewhere in these 70 kilometers of shelving is a ledger of materials purchased for Leonardo to paint the mural.
27:18The forgotten 500-year-old recipe for da Vinci's experimental painting technique.
27:24These books are not written in contemporary Italian, so we need an expert to decipher them, basically.
27:32And that's where Rab Hatfield comes in.
27:33What we have here is a record from the 1st of March, 1512.
27:41Rab has studied these documents.
27:43He's sifted through countless books like this, looking for clues about the Battle of Anghiari.
27:52It's an abbreviation for Leonardo, da Vinci.
27:56It's interesting to actually be able to touch history like that and have it right at your fingertips.
28:02And see an ancient clue for yourself.
28:06It also mentions Greek pitch.
28:09The pile of Greek pitch, it's 89 pounds, 8 ounces.
28:13Just the fact that there were these purchases recorded means that Leonardo was working on the painting.
28:18Specifically for the painting, per la pictura.
28:21It's another indicator that at one time or another the painting was up on that wall.
28:25Just so, and by just so, they mean plaster of Paris.
28:29That's our evidence.
28:31And it may not be absolutely airtight, but it's all we've got.
28:35With this shopping list of ingredients, Serracini knows what exact chemicals to look for in his search behind the wall.
28:41And that search begins now.
28:45The first hole is ready to drill.
28:47Is the Leonardo back there, or not?
28:48Is the Olympic scope ready?
28:49Is the Olympic scope ready?
29:09Right before they started to drill, it was very tense.
29:26The UCSD students were very, very tense, and Maurizio was uptight about the presence
29:34of the overfeet shawl.
29:36There was a real risk to damage the painting.
29:44All these cameras, all the people, of course, all of this light.
29:49My career was probably at the end of...
29:55If something goes on.
29:58Yeah.
30:03The first hole.
30:05The probe is ready.
30:20It'll be their first look inside the 500-year-old wall.
30:24We're about eight centimeters inside the wall, but about seven centimeters short of going
30:36through the brick.
30:38You can see some very tiny dust particles that are being sucked in.
30:43It means that there is an air flow of this particle flowing inside.
30:49So there is a void, in other words.
30:51How far are we?
30:5313 and a half centimeters.
30:56And how far do we have to go?
30:5817.
31:00Oh, you're at 17.
31:0617.
31:08So we should be at the wall.
31:13The moment of truth.
31:17It looks like we are at the end of the brick and we are seeing the old wall.
31:36No paint.
31:37No paint.
31:39But perhaps there's traces of Leonardo's recipe among the rubble.
31:45Could be plaster.
31:46We do not know.
31:47We don't know the composition and we want to find out.
31:50If the chemical composition matches the ingredients for the mural found in the archive, it means
31:56they are at least in an area of the wall where Leonardo may have worked.
31:59Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.
32:02Marco, we are looking for gesso.
32:04Finding gesso, plaster of Paris, is the key.
32:08But if it's just basic mortar, this hole has missed the target area.
32:13It's a little bit more.
32:14It's just not enough.
32:15Trust me.
32:16You have to kill.
32:17The precious samples keep falling off as they extract the collection tool.
32:21We ask all of you, when the fiber is inside, just not to move because he is trying to go
32:26through a very hollow space.
32:34An hour later, success.
32:38It's just some of the plaster or mortar.
32:42I guess we'll find out when we analyze it.
32:46The results are a disappointment.
32:49This hole isn't in the right spot.
32:51So, for tonight, that's all we could do.
32:57Obviously, since the restores have gone, we cannot do much more.
33:03How do you say?
33:04We are looking for some of the folks for tonight.
33:12The next morning.
33:13Another surprise.
33:15I wasn't expecting this.
33:17A throng of reporters.
33:23The spike in attention from the press has to do with the question of whether it's right to drill through a vizari in search for a da Vinci that may not be there.
33:35You can't break the vizari. No, we're not going to break the vizari.
33:39The manner in which this research is done does not in any way impair the integrity of this.
33:45The search for Leonardo's mural is under attack from the press.
33:49The press did what normally the press does, blow on fire.
33:55Nobody's bothering to report that the original vizari is not going to be damaged,
34:00and they're entertaining this fantasy in the press, especially the local press,
34:05that Saracini is just wandering around on the scaffold with this drill bit randomly drilling holes into a vizari.
34:15That night, they begin again.
34:17This is the second hole, yes.
34:20You know, every time you drill a hole, it's a new possibility of finding something.
34:26But the difficulties collecting materials continue.
34:30I did not expect that we were going to work through such a tiny hole.
34:36Another day down, and no results.
34:41Night three.
34:42Tonight, they'll try with a bigger drill to create a bigger opening to better maneuver the scope.
34:48The drill bit was causing too much vibration on the scaffolding.
35:07An unusually hard brick stops the drill and the progress.
35:11Bad luck, huh?
35:12Otherwise, it would not be enough fun.
35:21Over the next two nights, they'll drill three more holes.
35:24We just found a very disrupted wall behind, and there was no trace of anything.
35:33It just seems odd that the wall is so irregular.
35:37Every single time they drill in, they find a new surprise.
35:41No signs of paint, no traces of Leonardo's recipe.
35:54The holes are all missing the target area.
35:56All that was piling up over my shoulder, and I was facing the worst nightmare that is not being able to give any answer whatsoever.
36:10With time running out, failure or success is just around the corner.
36:15The hunt for Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari is running out of time.
36:28Two nights left.
36:30What do you think they got?
36:46I think they got to the back wall again.
36:48Yeah.
36:50Nothing new.
36:55Like nothing in there yet.
36:57One day left.
37:00The team still has no answers.
37:05I'm worried that it's simply going to become conventional wisdom that they drilled, they looked, it wasn't there.
37:12That could be the worst thing that could happen, because the painting very well could still be there.
37:19Tomorrow is another day.
37:22Somebody said that before me, right?
37:24It's frustrating.
37:26But there may not be another day.
37:33The tsunami came unexpected.
37:39And it was the result of something that none of us would have ever thought was going to happen.
37:49If you just open any newspaper in Italy, they will tell you the worst things about us.
37:55That we destroyed the masterpiece of Azari.
37:58That we have been coming here like vandals.
38:02Critics opposed to the project have instigated a media feeding frenzy.
38:05The stories are getting absurdly inaccurate, and there seems to be a willful misrepresentation of what's happening here.
38:15One of the stories said that he was going to drill 78 holes into the vizarre.
38:21I'm going to head back over and see if it showed up.
38:24There's also supposedly an endoscope that emits neutrons that's going to be used.
38:30The reporting has been so jaw-droppingly bad.
38:34People are reading these things, and the hysteria is building.
38:39It's having an effect.
38:41Next, the project's opponents file a petition with the state prosecutor's office, launching a formal investigation.
38:49We have done no wrongdoing.
38:54We have had all the permissions.
38:57We were stabbed in the back by the same people who were supposed to work with us.
39:04Some of them are my colleagues.
39:08So why they don't ask me something before signing this petition?
39:13I really don't understand.
39:15I mean, I was really very sad that something, somebody could think that I was there damaging the vizarre's painting.
39:32The mayor calls a high-level meeting, and the fate of the project hangs in the balance.
39:38The sensitive discussion is off-limits to the camera.
39:53The meeting to decide the project's fate has gone on for hours.
39:57But yeah, it seems like there's not any work going on at the wall tonight, according to Maritz, yeah?
40:01Nothing going on, so you might as well go.
40:09There will be no more drilling.
40:12Take everything out, move it to the side.
40:14I'm going to clean everything up.
40:15The project is shut down.
40:22When they shut the project down, it was almost like a relief, despite the disappointment.
40:29We have to get our junk, and we're out of here. I'm flying home tomorrow.
40:45So we came up here, and the strangers are up on here.
40:49They're a little awkward seeing them here.
40:52I was not even supposed to get on the scaffold. Everybody was gone already. All my students and my colleagues have left.
40:59I got up on the scaffold, almost like, uh, let's find some peace.
41:09Let's pretend to do some work.
41:11Let's pretend to do some work.
41:1736 years of searching have come to an end.
41:24He must say goodbye to the wall he's come to know so well.
41:27I felt as if I was at the bedside of a dear one who was dying.
41:42Like, it's useless. It will never make it.
41:48I was really... by myself.
41:55Suddenly, all my thoughts, my bad thoughts disappeared.
42:10I mean, literally. Wiped off.
42:23Guys?
42:25You're sorry, you were saying? We had to get more media.
42:30But this is something. This is not just an accident.
42:35It looks like paint, honest. I'm not making it up. Look how it is.
42:45I don't know. I might be simply optimistic.
42:49Looks like pigment to me.
42:51Can you imagine if we could find something now? That would be a knockout.
42:56Serracini gathers his team one last time to get a sample of what he's seen.
43:03But the samples are so deep inside the wall that recovery is virtually impossible.
43:18The effort goes on for hours without success.
43:23At this point, it's out of reach.
43:25I have full documentation, video documentation, to prove that it's not my imagination.
43:34But unless I get hold of a piece of it and prove that it's real paint, I cannot say anything definite.
43:45And that's very frustrating.
43:46We still don't know whether the painting is there.
43:53Maurizio is still convinced that it is.
43:55Personally, I don't know whether it's there any more than I did when it began.
44:00But Maurizio is sure. And he's going to keep trying. He's going to keep trying to find it. He's going to keep looking.
44:08Throughout my professional life, my belief that is there has never changed.
44:19No one has proven the contrary.
44:22There is no intrinsic logic in anyone saying that there is nothing left.
44:33And besides, is there a good reason not to have the wish to know more?
44:39So, you believe it's there?
44:41Yes, Uncle Mitz is there.
44:49For now, knowing if Leonardo's mural survives must remain a matter of faith.
45:11So you can still be able to make this location?
45:12Maybe you have to fill here with this, but...
45:14I might think it's four hours after going on time.
45:16If we decide where that is, you can see there are some kind of things as well as possible without eating it.
45:18But because we try very well.
45:21We often want these experiences.
45:24We also want to appreciate the value of this pakistan on there.
45:26And we ask them where the uncle is what he is supposed to be done.
45:28Alex Kata сделал Ka вариант?
45:30They don't want theeler to think about that.
45:34everly.
45:36The dad caught my talk about it either.