|
|
| © Musée du Louvre / A. Dequier |
|
|
 |
|
|
Denon
1st Floor
Mollien. Romanticism
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The salles rouges (red rooms) and the Inverted Pyramid |
|
|
| The three rooms in the Louvre where the works of the great French painters between 1780 and 1840 (David, Ingres, Géricault, Delacroix) are displayed were created by Napoleon III. Their décor, with its red walls, forms a striking contrast with the paintings in their gilt frames. The setting created for these works results in a spectacular explosion of color. The opening of the movie The Da Vinci Code is set here, with the curator Saunière running through the rooms, mortally wounded. At the end of the room there is a staircase with a landing occupied by a café. This is the part of the museum that is nearest to the place where The Da Vinci Code ends: the Inverted Pyramid, whose glass belly can be seen through the windows, in the middle of the Rond-Point. The Inverted Pyramid is located in the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping mall inaugurated in 1993 that adjoins the Hall Napoléon of the Louvre. At the end of The Da Vinci Code, Langdon understands that the pyramidion of stone placed under the point of the Inverted Pyramid houses the grave of Mary Magdalene. This entirely fictional revelation has nevertheless ensured that the little monument has entered local legend and tourist folklore. But 1.2 kilometers from the Inverted Pyramid, in the church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine (the Madeleine), there is a reliquary containing the left thighbone of a woman aged around fifty, who died nearly twenty centuries ago. Of Mediterranean type, she was around 1 meter 58 centimeters tall . . . |
|
|
Go down the staircase, cross the gallery of Italian sculptures (room 4) and take the escalators in the Salle du Manège (on the right, room A) to return to the Hall Napoléon under the Pyramid. From the circular information desk under the Pyramid, you can see a long gallery with stores leading to the Carrousel du Louvre. Go to the end of this gallery and you will reach the Inverted Pyramid. This is where The Da Vinci Code and our trail come to an end.
|
|
|
