Paris — LAST summer, 20,000 more people visited St. Sulpice Church than the summer before. With its northern tower shrouded in scaffolding, the French Baroque church is one of the least inviting houses of worship in the City of Light, so I recently went there to find out the reason for the dramatic increase in visitors.
Although the church has an artistic prize -- Eugene Delacroix's "St. Michael Vanquishing the Devil" -- no one seemed interested in seeing it when I visited. Instead, tourists were gathered by a marble obelisk on the transept's northern aisle, where a sign said: "Contrary to fanciful allegations in a recent bestselling novel, this is not the vestige of an ancient pagan temple."
With 57 million copies of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" in print, it seemed abundantly clear that the people visiting St. Sulpice on the Left Bank were literary pilgrims on the book's trail. They were following in the footsteps of the monk Silas, who goes to the church seeking the key to a secret about Christianity that simply doesn't exist, according to St. Sulpice.
Never mind. Fans are coming in ever-increasing numbers to "Da Vinci Code" settings in France, England and Scotland, inspired by the book's gripping plot, exotic cast of characters and shocking reappraisal of church history.
With an anticipated blockbuster-movie version of the book, denounced by the Vatican, opening Friday in the U.S., the stream of "Da Vinci Code" pilgrims to Europe is expected to reach flood levels this summer. So, even though literary pilgrims used to mean peanuts to the travel industry, tour operators large and small have begun to take note of "The Da Vinci Code" phenomenon.
Ellen McBreen, founder of Paris Muse, a walking-tour company that specializes in personalized guided visits to museums in the French capital, was one of the first to recognize the trend. "We'd been giving tours in the Louvre but were pretty clueless about the book," she said. "Then people started asking, 'Do Leonardo da Vinci paintings have secret codes in them?' "
In February 2004, Paris Muse launched the tour "Cracking 'The Da Vinci Code' at the Louvre," followed by another that tracks the book's adventures through the heart of Paris. McBreen said more than 800 people have toured the Louvre with her guides, seeking messages in the "Mona Lisa" and the "Virgin of the Rocks."
