The Hindu : International : The Da Vinci tour

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 13, 2004

International

International

The Da Vinci tour

By Amelia Gentleman

PARIS, SEPT. 12. The church of St. Sulpice has many attractions — notably its Delacroix mural. But most visitors are now attracted primarily by a huge bronze candlestick, used by an evil albino monk to batter a nun to death in Dan Brown's best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code.

With more than 10 million copies sold worldwide, The Da Vinci Code has now given birth to its own tourist industry: three companies have recently launched tours of Paris taking in the book's principal locations — the Gare St. Lazare, the Ritz, the U.S. Embassy and the Louvre.

Most intriguing is the question of whether Pei's glass pyramid really has 666 panes of glass, as the book suggests, in a deliberate Satanic reference. The Da Vinci tourists make their way from the pyramid to cast a quick glance at the Mona Lisa, but are primarily interested in the stretch of parquet where the naked body of the Louvre's elderly curator is discovered.

Officials at St. Sulpice are annoyed by the onslaught of visitors brandishing the novel and the book's distortion of history. Staff are so exhausted by demands for information about the Priory of Sion, which Mr. Brown links to the church, that they have hung a terse notice on a side wall: "Contrary to the fanciful allegations in a recent best-selling novel, this is not the vestige of a pagan temple."

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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