In 1667, the architect who bent stone into impossible weightless beauty threw himself onto his own sword. His violent end stands in stark contrast to the soaring, mathematically pure spaces he left behind across Rome.

This episode explores Francesco Borromini, the self-taught stonemason who reshaped Baroque architecture using geometry and white stucco while battling depression, unyielding patrons, and his bitter rival Bernini. It reveals how an uncompromising purist created transcendent buildings in a city built by committee and papal whim, and why he asked to be buried with no name at all.

• How his stonemason background let him warp space in ways that terrified rival painters and sculptors
• The tiny San Carlino, built on a plot so small it could fit inside a single pier of St. Peter’s
• The clover-and-star geometry of Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza with its corkscrew spiral steeple
• The bitter battles at the Oratory and Sant’Agnese, where rivals smothered his stark designs in color and statuary
• His anonymous burial and the modern controversy over Switzerland claiming him on its banknote