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The Da Vinci Code plays a game of i-spy with all the churches visited by the novel's characters. Each church, it turns out, is secretly encoded with pagan shapes and symbols.
In fact, the book claims that all Gothic cathedrals are structured as "a secret tribute to a woman's womb", complete with doorways shaped like genitalia. This monumental betrayal of Christian teaching was supposedly engineered by the Templars (Christian knights who fought in the crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries) even thought the Templars actually had no involvement in building cathedrals. Experts in the history of church architecture hardly know where to start in correcting the misreading and inaccuracies of The Da Vinci Code at this point.
Several buildings featured in the novel are especially interesting for their symbolism.
In fact, the book claims that all Gothic cathedrals are structured as "a secret tribute to a woman's womb", complete with doorways shaped like genitalia. This monumental betrayal of Christian teaching was supposedly engineered by the Templars (Christian knights who fought in the crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries) even thought the Templars actually had no involvement in building cathedrals. Experts in the history of church architecture hardly know where to start in correcting the misreading and inaccuracies of The Da Vinci Code at this point.
Several buildings featured in the novel are especially interesting for their symbolism.
The Louvre
The Louvre, Paris – is where The Da Vinci Codeplot kicks off, and where it ends up, 450 pages later. Two of the Louvre's glass pyramids, created by the architect IM Pei in 1989, feature in the novel for their symbolic value. The main pyramid, which appears above ground level, is said by Dan Brown to have 666 panes of glass, which is "the number of Satan" according to the biblical book of Revelation.
In fact, the pyramid has a more prosaic 673 panes, according to the Louvre itself. The Pyramide Inversée is below ground level, and is an upside-down glass pyramid, the tip of which almost touches the tip of a small stone pyramid set in the floor of the concourse beneath. These two pyramids provide the denouement of Dan Brown's novel, where they symbolise the Chalice and Blade of the Grail mystery. As far as is known, IM Pei's only intention in building these structures was to bring light down into the subterranean concourse.
In fact, the pyramid has a more prosaic 673 panes, according to the Louvre itself. The Pyramide Inversée is below ground level, and is an upside-down glass pyramid, the tip of which almost touches the tip of a small stone pyramid set in the floor of the concourse beneath. These two pyramids provide the denouement of Dan Brown's novel, where they symbolise the Chalice and Blade of the Grail mystery. As far as is known, IM Pei's only intention in building these structures was to bring light down into the subterranean concourse.
