Code Tread

One of the many London landmarks featured on The Da Vinci Code walk. Photo Craig Taylor.

At this moment, more than 25 million copies of The Da Vinci Code have been purchased by mankind, and the imminent film, starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou, is moving towards us like a cultural meteorite. Since its release in 2003, Dan Brown’s conspiracy theory thriller about a Catholic secret society has become ubiquitous, with sightings from Lima to Oslo. In London, as it is often pointed out by the small minority of people too snobby to actually read the book, it has become impossible to get on the tube without seeing the great twin signifiers of the age: two white wires connecting an iPod to its owner’s ears and a copy of The Da Vinci Code on his/her lap. “It’s like riding in a Lamborghini,” is one way I recently heard the book described. “But one with square tires. It’s going to get you there quickly. It might be exciting, but it’s clunky, clunky, clunky.”

Regardless of arguments over quality and charges of plagiarism, the book has spawned a cottage industry. There are now follow-up titles decoding and recoding Da Vinci. Britain’s Channel 4 has aired the documentary The Real Da Vinci Code and lame satires have quickly sprung forth from the meeting rooms of desperate publishers: The Asti Spumante Code, The Dick Cheney Code, The Givenchy Code, and, a miracle of idiocy, The Da Vinci Cod. So it comes as little surprise that London Walks, the “original and foremost” walking tour company of London, has incorporated the adventures of Da Vinci’s Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu into its schedule.

London Walks has been a fixture of the city since the 1960s. There are more than 300 tours, most sexed up by either subject matter (Jack the Ripper walks, classic murders and, for those with good shoes, beachcombing on the Thames in search of the Thames eel), or subtitles (Pox, Plague, Leeches and Quacks). Over the years, London Walks has been clever enough to seize on any bit of the city tied to pop culture or literature. The Charles Dickens walk continues, as does the Oscar Wilde, and Wouldn’t It Be Loverlee?, a walk for My Fair Lady enthusiasts. The Da Vinci Code walk replaces one called The Old City Nobody Knows, which, according to one of the tour guides, was attracting a mere three people some Wednesdays. Instead, in a master stroke of synergy, the company has added a walk loosely tied to the bestselling book.

One recent Wednesday afternoon at 2 p.m., a crowd of about 70 Da Vinci fans gathered in the park next to Temple station. Taking advantage of the fact that the two protagonists dash through the area to Westminster, the tour is a good way of throwing in the odd Old City fact. For only £5.50 ($11), Da Vinci decoders will have the symbology of the area explained and the book has already primed the crowd, seeming to have made conspiracy theorists out of all of its readers.

The crowd gathers during The Da Vinci Code walk. Photo Craig Taylor.

Today, we are a large clump of North Americans, dotted with Kiwis and Australians. “Who’s read the book?” tour guide Brian Hicks asks. He’s warmly dressed and speaks in a loud actor’s voice, tinged with a little hamminess at all the necessary points. Hands lift toward the sky. “Because I am going to have to tell who the murderer is.” A loud chuckle goes through the crowd. A woman beside me whispers: “We all know who the murderer is.”

Brian begins his spiel with the history of the area, which served as the headquarters of the Knights Templar until 1312. We may be living in a great new evangelical age, but when he mentions a theory put forward in Templar books, as well as The Da Vinci Code — namely, that Mary Magdalene gave birth to Jesus’s daughter — there is a murmur of agreement. “It’s like we’re on a movie set,” says another woman. Specifically, a set where every piece of stonework and ornamentation potentially hints at centuries of Catholic deceit.

We’re led to Temple Church, the late 12th century building that features sculptures of nine medieval knights. Everything in Temple seems to have taken on the air of mystery today. We flit over the history of the Knights Templar, the untaxed protectors and first bankers, who ensured safe pilgrimage for Christians heading towards Jerusalem. More important, this church, Brian points out, is where Da Vinci’s heroes, Langdon and Neveu, were ambushed by the albino assassin, Silas.

Temple Church, we are told, is also the place where Dan Brown made a few glaring errors. There are fact checkers who regularly appear on the walk. Tom, another of the guides, tells a story about the crowds when the walks first began. Fans with open copies of the book stood in front of him, ready to refute and point out any slight misquote. And so now each guide likes to point out some of Brown’s inaccuracies. Brian mentions that it’s been suggested that the author put in mistakes on purpose to show that this is a book of fiction. “Dan Brown says the church was bombed in 1940,” Brian warns us. “It was not. It was 1941. Dan Brown says that Robert and Sophie are looking for the 10th knight. No! Wrong. There are only nine.”

The facts are whizzing by and even though Brian is doing his best to lead us through it, there is an endless well of shadiness and coincidence to draw from, as well as conspiracies involving, among other elements, Kabbalah, Madonna, the Knights Templar, Opus Dei and the Holy Grail. As we move up to Fleet Street, I walk with Kevin Miller, a student from Philadelphia, who is looking confused. Is he struggling with the symbolic ramifications? “My whole trip has been a bit of a blur,” he says. “Part of me thinks I’m still in Greece cause that’s where I was yesterday. I read the book ages ago and this seemed like a way of doing something I could tell my parents about.” Are they conspiracy theorists, too? “No, it’s just I have to have something to tell them. I’m not going to be mentioning a lot of what I did in Greece.”

On Fleet Street, it’s pointed out that Tom Hanks actually ran down these flagstones while filming the movie. Another murmur of approval. We are walking in a large human clump of Da Vinci people, almost an actual physical manifestation of the mainstream, and as we move slowly down the pavement, lawyers from the Inns of Court edge around our lumpish mass with ugly looks on their faces. They, of course, must be part of the Catholic / Kabbalah / Freemason society that’s keeping Jesus’s children in the care of French albinos.

The walk winds back towards the underground. Brian warns us that although Langdon jumped over the barriers and paced up and down the train carriage, we must actually buy a ticket. As the tube takes us towards Westminster and on to St. James’s Park and Trafalgar Square, he reflects on the success of The Da Vinci Code: the mysteries, the conspiracy, and how it’s a lot nicer to lead the walk for 70 Da Vinci fans instead of three history buffs. The only thing that could have made it better? “Why didn’t Robert and Sophie stop at a pub?” he asks. “If only there was a Da Vinci Code Pub Walk.”

Craig Taylor is a feature writer for the Guardian in London, England.

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