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We've had the best-selling novel, the court case and soon the blockbuster movie, so it was fairly inevitable that The Da Vinci Code: the walking tour, would follow closely behind.
While similar tours are running in Edinburgh, London and anywhere else that may have been touched by the Da Vinci wand (Rennes, Winchester, Lincoln…), Paris lays more of a claim to the tale than most, with a significant chunk of the story set in the city. It's already a Mecca for Dan Brown fans - 1,000 copies of the novel have been left on Eurostar since the novel was published.
In pursuit of Dan Brown's Paris, I booked a place on the tour, polished off the novel on the Eurostar, and joined a gathering of 25 or so tourists in Place Vendôme outside the Ritz Hotel, where the book, and tour, begin.
As I approach the group, guide, Mary Beth is asking everyone when they read the book. As the only one who's finished it in the last 12 months I'm singled out as tour swot, and Mary Beth directs the tricky questions to me: "What did Lieutenant Collet slip into Robert Langdon's pocket when he handed him his jacket before leaving his suite at the Ritz Hotel?", was the first (answer: a tracking device).
As her name suggests, Mary Beth isn't from France - a few minutes of her Yankee drawl and she gives away her Texan roots. But as most of the punters are Americans, it's probably best that it's not being compèred in a thick Gallic accent.
Mary Beth (pictured, left) is a great storyteller and by the time we leave Place Vendôme she's set the scene so even Chippy and Phyllis' husband (he doesn't get a word in edgeways), who haven't read the book, are clued-up. Her story is peppered with jokes and anecdotes: "Is anyone staying at the Ritz Hotel? Coz if you are, we're all coming over to your place later."
She also tells us: "There's one rule on Classic Walks. You gotta mingle." Thankfully no one does.
We follow the story into the Jardin des Tuileries and Mary Beth points out Brown's first slip-up at what she calls "the artistic licence staarp". "Collet and Langdon drove across the gravel paths of Tuileries in the early hours of the morning, but the gates would have been locked at dusk," she tells the huddle. This goes down well with the group, and Mary Beth goes on to call Brown's bluff on his claim that: "From the esplanade at the end of the Tuileries, four of the finest art museums of the world could be seen… one at each point of the compass."
"You can't see Pompidou from here," she says, pointing out the remaining three - Musée d'Orsay, Musée du Jeu de Paume and the Louvre. "He should have gone for the Orangery," she says, referring to the Musée de l'Orangerie in the Tuileries.
To my disappointment the next stop is not the Louvre's Grand Gallery, where the story continues and Jacques Saunière pulls a Caravaggio off the wall to raise the alarm and where he dies after placing clues on Da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Madonna of the Rocks.
But at only €20 for the two-hour tour, we don't have the time or tickets to see the Mona Lisa - over six million people visit The Louvre each year and most want to see her, so unless you're there at 8.30am with an advance purchase ticket, it means a long wait. If you're an early bird, you could attempt to beat Art Buchwald's six-minute sprint past The Louvre's "three leading ladies": Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo and Winged Victory of Samothrace. It's cited by Brown and attempted in The Dreamers, an indie movie set in Paris, but frowned upon by Louvre authorities.
Instead we head to the shopping centre under the Louvre pyramid, where Phyllis sends her husband away so as not to ruin the ending, and Mary Beth gives the group a chance to take photos of Brown's burial spot of the Holy Grail.
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