Cosmopolitan China

In China's Greatest Treasures, BBC art critic Alastair Sooke travels through modern day China to discover that much of what defines Chinese culture today can be traced back through thousands of years to some of China's most spectacular historic artefacts housed in museum collections across the country. Alastair explores China's relationship with the outside world by unlocking the secrets of one of the countries great, golden ages, The Tang Dynasty. He views the remarkable impact of the Silk Road, a 6500 KM trading route between China, the Middle East and Europe, and on the art of this celebrated era - Including a ceramic camel discovered in an ancient Tang tomb. He travels to China's former capital city, Chang'an, now called Xian, to view a collection of 1500 year old tomb murals, sealed in a subterranean gallery underneath one of China's most celebrated institutions, The Shaanxi History Museum. And Alastair visits one of the last remaining Tang buildings, a 7th century pagoda built to house Buddhist relics and scrolls brought back to China by a Chinese monk, called Xuan Zang.