27 October 2004
“‘They set off explosions at all hours and climb over the cemetery wall to dig up the dead.'” It’s not Iraq, it’s Rennes-le-Chateau, France — a devil-infested town in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, but a sleepless and fan-besieged mountain village of 112 people in real life, that has recently had to exhume the corpse of Berenger Sauniere, the “renegade Catholic priest” featured in Brown’s book, to keep it safely in a new mausoleum, which tourists can visit for 3 euros, or buy a bottle of wine with Sauniere’s picture on it for 5 euros.