Imagined angels and demons and the readers in pursuit

July 20, 2008|Paul French, Globe Correspondent

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At its best, the book inspired me to tour the necropolis below St. Peter's where tradition holds the apostle is buried. It's not on any "Angels & Demons" tour, says Vatican guide Daniela Piermattei Taennler, and you have to book months in advance. It's a crucial location in the story but she wonders whether the author ever visited. "I'm told his description is nothing like what's here," she said, adding she hasn't read the book and doesn't want to after the church labeled "The Da Vinci Code" blasphemous and asked the faithful to boycott the film.

Underneath the church is a narrow street lined with mausoleums decorated with paintings of flowers and early Christian iconography. The weight of the past is made all the more real when we duck under low ceilings and pass walls that over time have accumulated layers of civilization. Approaching the tomb believed to be that of St. Peter, I'm startled to see feet moving in the ceiling. There are grates overhead with views into the soaring basilica above us. We're walking under the baldacchino, Bernini's giant marble canopy positioned not under Michelangelo's dome - as "Angels & Demons" claims - but directly over St. Peter's tomb and the high altar. A curious boy glances down from the church and I wave to him.

Back in daylight, Taennler says the Vatican refused director Ron Howard's request - along with a handsome sum - to shoot in the churches featured in the book. No surprise there, considering it called "The Da Vinci Code" "an offense against God," she said. Of course, that's the kind of publicity you just can't buy. The filmmakers will re-create the church interiors on a Hollywood set.

I won't give away the ending, but let it be said that visitors should take Brown's version of Rome with something larger than a grain of salt. When I ask the commander of the Swiss Guard what he thinks of transforming his colorful custodians of the pope into machine gun-toting action heroes, Colonel Elmar Maeder lets out a laugh and says he wasn't consulted for the movie.

"You must remember," he says, "this is only fiction."

Paul French can be reached at paul.french@sympatico.ca.