AS FANS GET set to storm Rome in hot pursuit of Dan Brown's Path of Illumination, there's one key location that won't be on of any of the tours now flourishing to coincide with the release this month of Ron Howard's film of his novel Angels & Demons.
The archeological site beneath Saint Peter's is far too restricted to accommodate the kind of crowds unleashed on the Louvre and Rosalyn Chapel following the success of the Da Vinci Codeflick.
You must reserve months in advance to be among the 150 people a day permitted into the Vatican Grottos, the dank and claustrophobic crypts below the world’s largest church. And, pilgrims, don’t expect to pray at the tomb thought to be that of the first apostle. “This is about archeology, not religion,” says my no-nonsense guide, Daniela Piermattei Taennler.
With little headroom, we walk down a narrow ancient street lined with mausoleums of well-to-do Roman families. Some are decorated with early Christian iconography or paintings of flowers; another resembles a dining room, with carved benches. These early Christians wanted to be interred close to where they believed St Peter was buried.
Brown places a crucial part of the plot in this subterranean world, though you wouldn’t recognise it from his telling in the book.
"I'm told his description is nothing like what's here," says the guide, who doubts Brown ever visited and wouldn't read Angels & Demonsafter the Church labelled The Da Vinci Codeblasphemous and asked the faithful to boycott that film.
The tour lasts about an hour, and as we approach a mound of rubble I’m startled to see feet moving in the ceiling – grates overhead give views into the soaring basilica above us. We’re walking under the Baldacchino, Bernini’s giant marble canopy over St Peter’s tomb. A curious boy glances down from the church; I wave back at him.
** To book a tour of the Vatican Grottos (€10), e-mail scavi@fsp.va