The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code written by Dan Brown which has been filmed has now gone on the Boards. These pictures give you an insight into the film that has created much controversy.

Seeking help from Sir Isaac Newton

Westminster Abbey's Sir Isaac Newton monument was created in 1731 by sculptor Michael Rysbrack and architect William Kent. In the sculpture, Newton's elbow is resting on some of his great works. The two boys in the sculpture are using instruments related to Newton's mathematical and opticla work. In Brown's novel, the mysterious Teacher comes to the monument to solve a riddle that teases "You seek the orb that ought to be on his tomb."

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Self-inflicted pain

A member of Opus Dei is seen wearing a cilice, a spiked chain worn on the upper thigh for two hours a day as an act of penance. In Brown's novel, "hulking albino" Silas puts on the device to purge himself of sin before entering the Eglise de Saint Suplice, where he hopes to find the mysterious keystone. While wearing the cilice, Silas also whipped himself with the Discipline, a heavy knotted rope meant to draw blood.

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At long last, the secret revealed

The Inverted Pyramid of the Caroussel du Louvre was designed by I. M. Pei. In the book, the invertes pyramid is seen as a chalice, a female symbol; while the stone pyramid below is seen as the blade, a male symbol. Robert Langdon comes to believe that the stone chalice holds the novel's secret.

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Mistaken identity

Visitors view a full-scale projected image of Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" in Tokyo. Dan Brown's book makes the case that the figure seated at the right hand of Jesus, traditionally thought to be the apostle John, is not a man, but a woman. Mary Magdalene. When Sophie and Langdon seek shelter at Sir Leigh Teabing's estate, he tells them that the cover-up was a "smear campaign launched by the early Church."

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Resting Place

Poets' Corner is the name given to the South Transept of London's Westminster Abbey due to all the poets, writers and artists buried there. The first to be interred there was Geoffrey Chaucer. Others include Edmund Spencer, John Dryden and Charles Dickens. In the novel, Sophie and Langdon, in a hurry to find the Sir Isaac Newton monument, find themselves lost in Poets' Corner.

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The mystery deepens

The astronomical gnomon inside Saint-Suplice church was commisioned in order to determine the exact date of Easter and the winter and summer equinoxes. In the novel, Silas knocks on tiles beneath the obelisk and discovers that one is hollow. He breaks the tile with a heavy iron votive-candle holder from the altar, and finds a tablet with a Bible verse.

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Mona Lisa Smile

Da Vinci's legendary "Mona Lisa" hangs in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre. In Brown's novel, Langdon points out to his students that in the work, the horizon line is lower on the left side than the right, with left symbolising the feminine. "It carries the subtle message of androgyny," he tells them.

Under the black light in the Louvre, Langdon and Sophie discover six words: "So dark the con of man." The clue to the mystery.

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Da Vinci's "The Man of Vitruvio" is on display at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. In the beginning of Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code," Professor Robert Langdon is brought by Lieutenant Jerome Collet to the Louvre Museum in Paris.

The body of curator Jacques Sauniere had been found in the position of Da Vinci's drawing. A cryptic message was written by the body along with the phrase "P.S. Find Robert Langdon." Cryptographer Sophie Neveu arrives to help Langdon elude the police and solve the mystery of her grandfather's death

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Sparking a memory

The Apprentice's Pillar and the Mason's Pillar of Scotland's Rosslyn's Chapel are replicas of the pillars that stood in Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. The number of visitors to the remote church incresed dramatically after the runaway success of the novel.

Brown's book suggests that the key to finding the Holy Grail may lay here. Sophie remembers she's been in the chapel when she sees the ornate Apprentice's Pillar.

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Mystery of the tenth knight

London's Temple Church was the headquarters of the Knights Templar, who were both monks and soldiers in the Middle Ages. The round church contains marble effigies of nine medieval knights. Sophie, Langdon and Teabing come to the church to solve a cryptic riddle, and instead marvel over the tenth missing knight. Are they in the right place?

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Deciphering the code

A cryptex is a portable vault used to hide secret messages, and consists of five dough nut-sized discs of marble connected by a brass framework. In Brown's book, if anyone tries to force the cryptex open, the information inside will self-destruct. Each cryptex contains a papyrus scroll rolled around a delicate glass vial of vinegar. If the vial breaks, the vinegar will dissolve the papyrus. To solve the book's central mystery, Langdon and Sophie must figure out the clues to open two different cryptexes one inside the other created by Sophie's grandfather.