'The Da Vinci Code'

The Da Vinci Code had its home in Cathar country.

With Dan Brown’s runaway bestseller, Mary’s legend spread far and abroad, begetting new pilgrimages to Paris and beyond, both secular and religious. In the West, Mary became a metaphor for the modern spiritual woman in search of herself and books about her proliferated at an astonishing rate just as paintings proliferated in the 16th century. The Titian red hair may have helped.

But now it's a two decades later and nobody cares?

Her legend has eroded like the fresco above has been eroded by humidity in the Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan (it's actually next door, high on the wall of the refectory of the convent). Hoaxes and forgeries have proliferated. Plus, once the historians got to work on the bloodlines theory, it didn't really hold up. But that was never the point really. Undermining the official story was a lot more fun and we all need to dream. Agnostics believe the Christ story was only a dream in the first place.

But, if you want to believe in these stories, then you need to visit the source in Rennes-la-Château in Languedoc in the south of France. It was the story of Father Bérenger Saunière here in the late 19th/early 20th century that inspired articles in the late 1940's and in subsequent decades, that made their way into Gérard de Sède's L'Or de Rennes (in 1967) and then The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (in 1982), and The Da Vinci Code (in 2003). Saunière allegedly had documents in his possession that proved Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and that their decendants were of the Merovingian royal bloodline. Below is the Tour Magdala at Rennes-la-Château, which was Saunière's library. Great spot!

Close by, to the southeast, is another New Age pilgrimage site: the mountain of Pic de Bugarach, which has taken on apocalyptic associations in the minds of some. French police had to block access in December 2012 when the Mayan apocalypse was expected. It is the highest peak in the Corbières mountain region.

The famous Cathar sites are all nearby. More here.