The Louvre building and several of the museum's masterpieces play a major role in “The Da Vinci Code,” and this has had significant repercussions on the behavior of certain visitors. What direct or indirect effects have been perceived by people who work in the cultural and tourist industries?
The "Da Vinci Code" effect
The publication in 2003 of Dan Brown's novel “The Da Vinci Code” has had a significant impact on exchanges between certain museum visitors and people from the cultural or tourist industries who are in direct contact with them. Beginning in the summer of 2003––three months after the book's publication in the United States––lecturers and guides accompanying groups of museum visitors noticed that a new kind of question was being asked. English-speaking visitors seemed to be increasingly interested in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci and Caravaggio, and in places such as the Pyramid, the Grand Gallery, or the “Mona Lisa room”––not for artistic or historical reasons, but for their connection with the novel. The Virgin's gesture in “Madonna of the Rocks,” the number of glass panes in the Pyramid, the museum's security system, and above all the experts' opinions on the novel's “revelations” were becoming subjects of discussion in their own right. Once the book had been translated, its subsequent international success amplified this tendency, with Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and French visitors joining the Anglo-Saxons. In 2006, the “Da Vinci Code” effect has become part of the daily lives of the those responsible for organizing visits to the Louvre. The international release of the film version of the novel (in May 2006), and its future release on DVD, will probably mean that the recent “Da Vinci Code” phenomenon is here to stay.
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