In the late 1800s, new European buildings mostly imitated Roman temples and Gothic churches. Then, beginning with Victor Horta's Hotel Tassel in Brussels in 1893, structures appeared that looked as if they had grown out of the pavement, with iron columns shaped like tree trunks and floors of curling mosaic vines. This episode explores how Art Nouveau fused three influences: Viollet-le-Duc's call to embrace iron and glass, William Morris's Arts and Crafts devotion to nature and handcraft, and the flat, asymmetrical compositions of Japanese woodblock prints.

We follow the movement from Siegfried Bing's Paris gallery, which gave it its name in 1895, to its peak at the 1900 Paris Exposition and Hector Guimard's Metro entrances, then across its regional mutations: geometric Vienna Secession, Gaudi's bone-like Casa Batllo in Barcelona, Tiffany's  ...