Seeking the Holy Grail

last updated 8 January 2015

Roslin, U.K.

Tourism at Scotland’s Rosslyn Chapel is up 50 percent this year, thanks to the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code. The book claims that the 15th-century chapel, with its intricate carvings of pagan, Masonic, and Christian imagery, contains clues to the location of the Holy Grail. Many visitors ask to see the Star of David that the book says is inscribed in the chapel floor. (It is not.) “They come looking for the Holy Grail,” gift-shop clerk Stuart Beattie told The New York Times. “Obviously, it’s not here.” Other legends about Rosslyn hold that the Ark of the Covenant is hidden in a pillar and that the head of John the Baptist is buried under the floor.