Angels And Demons

THE NAZIS IN ROME

Western countries, including the United States, where the boom years of the 1950s had created the impression of a society given over to the ephemeral pleasures of consumption. Today, the upper portion of the street, with its

ANGELS & DEMONS Fans (tifosi) of Dan Brown’s best-selling Rome-based novel Angels & Demons (2000) will be pleased to learn that several of the major settings of the book are on or near the itineraries or sites recommended in this book. The Pantheon, where protagonist Robert Langdon’s Rome saga begins, is just steps from the entrance to Hotel de la Minerve, whose rooftop bar is featured in chapter 7 (p. 227). Santa Maria del Popolo (and the porta next door), site of the Bernini-decorated Chigi chapel (Brown’s “First Altar of Science”), is at the beginning of our tour of restaurants in the Flaminio district (see “Around the Block in Flaminio,” p. 214). If you go to the Villa Medici, one of the academies we feature in chapter 6 (p. 190), you’ll also be only six hundred yards or so (and nice ones at that, Dianne says) from the church. The itinerary “The Nazis and Fascists in Central Rome” begins and ends with Angels & Demons locations. Santa Maria della Vittoria, home to Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Santa Teresa in ecstasy and the site of Brown’s “Third Altar of Science,” is near Largo S. Susanna (see p. 76) and not, as the novelist claims, at Piazza Barberini (also on our

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tour). For those who may not recall, Bernini is Brown’s historical villain, cast in the novel as the sculptor of an anti-religious, antiCatholic cult known as the Illuminati. Piazza Barberini, briefly described by Brown, contains two delightful Bernini sculptures and the Hotel Bernini (now Hotel Bernini Bristol, constructed in 1943). At novel’s end, Langdon and Vittoria Vetra found the Hotel Bernini the appropriate place to consummate their relationship, but the hotel’s rooftop bar did not make our list of the best such places (rooftop bars, that is). The rooftop management reserves the prime seating area overlooking the piazza for diners, relegating bar patrons to the back; even so, we enjoyed a drink there, and an Angels & Demons devotee might find it irresistible. Finally, the itinerary “The Strange Career of the Tevere” follows a course across Isola Tiberina (see p. 49), where Langdon is pulled from the roiling waters of the Tevere, a closeup view of which is on the itinerary too. Langdon is treated by the staff of the island’s 1580s Fatebenefratelli Hospital (as was one of the authors) and helicoptered (Langdon, not the author) to more adventures.