Museums & Meridians
O, draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!
A recent movie poster reminded me that the very eagerly awaited Hollywood adaptation of Dan Brown’s critically acclaimed best seller premieres on May 18 at all theatres near you. Now unless you’ve been living in under a rock for the past couple of years you would know what I’m talking about. Seriously people, if you haven’t read the book please ask me and I will loan you my paperback copy (sorry but my illustrated hardcover is too precious to be touched by heathen hands)!!! So the book I’m referring to is the Da Vinci Code. (Note: it’s pronounced daa vin’chee, because I swear I will go medieval on the next person I hear saying it daa vin’see)
The movie, starring Tom Hanks as the enigmatic Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and Audrey Tautou as the gifted cryptographer Sophie Neveu, the pair race against a ghostly enemy to break a fiendishly clever code. All clues point to covert religious organisation that will stop at nothing to protect a secret that threatens to overturn two millennia of accepted dogma.
I’m a Catholic. I believe in the teachings of the church. But I also loved loved loved the book! Regardless of the lies it spouts, it is still a very well written piece of literature. Bugger all who say that I’m contradictory! So all is natural that I’m dying to see the movie as well!
Anyway, the book and movie are set in Paris (mostly) and if you ever get a chance to see the City of Lights you must see one of the many highlights of the city – La Musée du Louvre /laa mu’say doo loof/, the largest and most famous museum in the world. Formerly a royal palace (Henri VI & Marie Antoinette used to live there before they lost their heads) it now houses approximately 35,000 pieces of priceless paintings, sculptures, artefacts and architecture. Alongside them also lies the most famous painting in the world – the Mona Lisa by the great Renaissance /ren-na-saunce/ visionary, Leonardo da Vinci. Dan Brown draws on Leo’s great mind of logic, forward vision and masterful double entendres which wholly makes the plot exciting.
The other masterpiece that you may find at La Louvre that’s featured in the Da Vinci Code is The Virgin of the Rocks, also by Leonardo da Vinci. There’s another slightly more ‘sterile & benign’ version that hangs at The National Gallery in London (Leo painted the 2nd piece after a lot of religious hoo-ha was made about the 1st one) but I prefer the original ‘darker & grim’ version at La Lourve.
The third highlight of the Da Vinci Code in Paris is the Saint-Sulpice /san sylpis/ Church, the largest church in Paris (it’s slightly bigger than the Notre Dame) and it’s got the cutest mismatched towers. Contrary to the book though, the church was NOT built over a temple of Isis but an ancient Romanesque church that was built sometime in the 13th century and additions were made to the church till it is what it is today.
The defining quality of this church is the gnomon or a sundial of sorts. There’s a meridian brass line (and again, contrary to the book it was NEVER a Rose-Line) that runs across the floor of the church to an obelisk and a set of lenses are set up on one of the windows of the church so at the Equinoxes (March 21st & September 21st) the sunlight would touch the oval plate on the floor near the altar and during the Winter Solstice (December 21st) the brass line on the obelisk. That itself is a wonder of ancient engineering and totally worth going to see!
Of course there’s La Tour Eiffel /laa tur e-fell/ (Eiffel Tower); the Jardin des Tuileries /jhar-daan deh twee-ler-ree/ (Garden of Tulips); Notre Dame de Paris /no-tre ‘daam deh paa-ree/ (Notre Dame Cathedral of Paris); Arc de Triomphe /arc-du-twomp/ (Arc of Triumph); Sacre Coeur /sa-cray cur/ (Sacred Heart Cathedral) and all the other beautiful things along the way but we really don’t have time to go through all of them and they aren’t central to the book/movie.
So that concludes our little tour of Paris. We hope that you enjoyed the brief excursion. Tune in to future blogs when we go where all roads lead to – Rome!
