Many fans of writer Dan Brown while in the Eternal City want to see the locations mentioned in his famous book. Within its private tours of Rome Road to Italy offers its clients a fascinating historical four-hour “Angels and Demons”.
You will follow in footsteps of Robert Langdon to see majestic Roman piazzas, beautiful churches, while decoding intermixed pagan and Christian symbolism. Your guide will tell you about secret messages created by one of the most influential secret brotherhoods in history, the Illuminati.
In the Church of Santa Maria Del Popolo you will pause at the Ceraci Chapel with majestic works by Caravaggio and the Chigi Chapel that was designed by Raphael. It is here that Langdon finds a stone with a mosaic depicting Mors, the pagan god of earth, and enters with hesitation a tomb to find a dead cardinal there.
The path of Illuminati will bring you to the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria with Bernini’s masterpiece The Ecstasy of St. Teresa where you will try to interpret the significance of the symbols that the famous sculptor, who was supposedly a member of the Illuminati, left for the for the ones in the know.
The spectacular Piazza Navona is one of the stops where you will see another great work of Bernini, the Fountain of the Four Rivers. Do not expect to find a dead cardinal here but you will certainly appreciate the beauty of the monument and discover that there is more than the eye can see.
You will also visit Piazza della Minerva and the Pantheon as well as a few other locations unknown to many tourists in your search for the Iluminati secrets.
You will then continue to the Castel Sant’Angelo, where, according to Don Brown, the Illuminati held their secret meetings, right under the Vatican’s nose. For many centuries, it served to the Catholic Church as a prison, fortress, and residence. Some important events happen in “Angels and Demons” in the Passetto, an underground tunnel that leads from the Castel Sant’Angelo directly into the Vatican.
The tour will conclude at the magnificent Saint Peter’s Basilica.
Photos by: Greg Willis, Richard Mortel, Diego Albero Román.
