Ecosse: The Grail trail

Fuelled with the passions Rosslyn seems to incite, dozens of books have been written about the place. Depending on your taste, the 15th-century building is the secret resting place of the mummified head of Christ, a collection of lost biblical scrolls, the ark of the covenant, the real stone of destiny, Herod's gold, a piece of the true cross or, most famously, the Holy Grail, the cup used by Christ at the last supper. Recently the grounds were surveyed by Strange Phenomena Investigations, a group of UFO enthusiasts from nearby Denny, who concluded the chapel was an astral doorway that could transport people into different galaxies and dimensions.

Rosslyn's allure may or may not be astral, but it is certainly going global. Many of this year's visiting tourists, especially the Americans, carry well-thumbed copies of one particular book. The Da Vinci Code has been a global bestseller for author Dan Brown, selling 7m copies in America and more than 500,000 in Britain since it was published last year.

Visitor numbers at the chapel are almost 40% higher than last year, an increase the Rosslyn Trust believes is largely down to the book. The numbers will undoubtedly swell even more next year with the release of Columbia Pictures' film of the book. The team behind the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind — director Ron Howard and scriptwriter Akiva Goldsman — are signed up and according to Variety magazine the frontrunners for the leading role are Tom Hanks, George Clooney and Russell Crowe. Rosslyn is about to become a global phenomenon.

The book's fictional central character is Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor, who is asked to help solve the murder of a curator at the Louvre in Paris. This entails breaking a series of baffling codes, unearthing secrets about historical figures such as Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci, and confronting a secret held for two millenniums by dark forces within the Catholic church. Its dramatic denouement takes place at Rosslyn, although it would be a shame to divulge it.

The fanatical interest of the tourists is only heightened by their visit. From the outside, the impact of the chapel's gargoyles and flying buttresses is spoiled by a massive steel structure protecting the roof during renovation work. But inside the effect is breathtaking.

Almost every square foot is covered with intricate sculpture and carvings — foliage, symbols, animals and figures both human and divine. The vaulted ceiling is decorated with stars, daisies, lilies and roses. Every pillar and window has its supporting cast of angels carrying hearts, scrolls, swords and crosses. One is playing the bagpipes.

The effect, it has been pointed out, is more like cake icing or topiary than stone. You peer at what looks like a mass of intricate decoration and suddenly a face comes into focus — sometimes pious, sometimes demonic. Over there is a depiction of the seven deadly sins, here the dance of death. Is that a monkey? Is that a lamb? There are more than 100 depictions of the Green Man, a pagan fertility symbol.

In this setting, The Da Vinci Code is either an exhilaratingly brainy thriller or the shaggiest of shaggy dog stories. The son of a maths professor with a lifelong interest in code breaking and secret societies, Brown likes a conundrum and clearly enjoys having an obsessive fan base. His website offers them toothsome titbits about himself, such as his use of "gravity boots" fixed to his ceiling in between bouts of writing. "Hanging upside down seems to help me solve plot challenges by shifting my entire perspective," he confides.

As part of his research, Brown spent time in Midlothian and questioned officials of the trust at length. "For centuries this stone chapel had echoed with whispers of the Holy Grail's presence," reads one passage. "The whispers had turned to shouts in recent decades when ground-penetrating radar revealed the presence of an astonishing structure beneath the chapel — a massive subterranean chamber. Not only did this deep vault dwarf the chapel but also it appeared to have no entrance or exit.

"Archeologists petitioned to begin blasting through the bedrock to reach the mysterious chamber, but the Rosslyn Trust forbade any excavation of the sacred site. Of course this only fuelled the fires of speculation. What was the Rosslyn Trust trying to hide?"

What indeed? "What makes people turn the pages of the book is the mystery of it, and that is how we design our tour," says Jeannie Barresi, director of Beyond Boundaries, a Colorado-based travel company, which offers a nine-day Da Vinci Code tour costing $2,999 (about Ï1,600) a head. Three other American tour operators are offering similar themed holidays taking in Paris, London and Rosslyn.

"It's all about hidden messages, secrets and conspiracies," says Barresi. "What is so interesting about the chapel are the codes hidden in its stones. What was the message that was being sent by the people who made those carvings? Art down the centuries has been full of coded messages of one sort or another and Rosslyn is the perfect place to look at that."

Rosslyn, she adds, exerts a powerful influence on the American imagination. On a recent trip one of her group refused to go down the stairs into the chapel vaults. "As soon as the door opened they backed off saying they weren't going in," she explains. "We're talking to the chapel trust about using the vaults to hold dinners. That would really be something!"

On a sunny afternoon last week, a steady stream of American tourists and a smattering of Scots were paying a £5 entry fee to sample the Rosslyn experience. Sarah Stein, a 56-year-old academic from North Carolina and Jewish by birth, considers herself "interfaith" and likes "to seek out places that have a feeling of the divine". She enthuses about the atmosphere of Rosslyn. "I find this to be a very feminine place," she says. "It is so small, close and intimate. It embraces you like a womb."

"The second I walked in I got goose bumps on my goose bumps," says John Fancher, 59, a retired psychologist from Alabama who learns Gaelic in his spare time.

As a psychologist he found the allure of the book perfectly understandable. "It's natural for people to want to understand their origins and also to question religious authority. It's the vault that interests me. Who knows what's down there," he says.

Those in charge of the Rosslyn Trust are careful not to make judgments about the various theories of what lies hidden in or under the chapel. But there is more to Rosslyn than a tale to tickle the imaginations of credulous tourists.

Two ornate pillars dominate the chapel; one is the renowned "apprentice pillar". The story has it that when Rosslyn's master mason was away his talented apprentice decided to show him what he was capable of and produced a masterpiece. The master was so jealous on his return that he bludgeoned the apprentice to death. The pillar in question is indeed a masterpiece. From its base of eight linked dragons unwinds a double spiral of floral design topped with biblical stories, a marvel in stone.

Inevitably it has been the focus of many of the theories about Rosslyn. Some insist the Holy Grail is entombed inside it. Keith Laidler in his book The Head of God: The Lost Treasure of the Templars insists the severed head of Christ is buried under the chapel, smuggled out of Jerusalem in the 12th century by the Knights Templar. Laidler backs his case with an inscription that supposedly reads "Here beneath this pillar lies the head of God".

The latest theory concerns itself with the shape of the spiral designs, which some say is the exact form of the DNA double helix. Was this known about hundreds of years ago or has the chapel's proximity to the Roslin Institute where Dolly the sheep was created just addled a few suggestible minds?

A window arch showing sculpted ears of corn provides one of the chapel's most enduring mysteries, and a link to its founder. The corn is said by botanists to be Indian corn, which at the time the chapel was built was found only in North America. The chapel was established in 1447 by the grandson of a famed adventurer, Prince Henry Sinclair of Orkney. Did he make it to America a century before Columbus?

Links with the Knights Templar are just as intriguing. They were a powerful order of monastic knights founded in 1119 to protect Holy Land pilgrims. They became fabulously wealthy, but in the late 13th century went into hiding when Pope Clement V had them outlawed.

The order adopted secret codes and symbols and many fled to Scotland and the protection of Robert the Bruce, who was himself in dispute with Rome. The question that has exercised many imaginations since is simple: what riches and relics did they bring with them?

One of the abiding mysteries of Rosslyn is why it survived the Reformation virtually intact when other churches with far less decoration were destroyed. One theory is that Oliver Cromwell, who stabled his horses in the chapel on his brutal march through Scotland, was constrained by freemason friends from destroying this masonic shrine.

If the Knights Templar have their way the next chapter in the story of Rosslyn will be the use of sonar and other kinds of imaging equipment to survey the rock on which the chapel stands, as well as the surrounding grounds, searching for the supposed labyrinth of vaults that have been referred to by numerous writers, including Sir Walter Scott.

John Ritchie, grand master of the Scottish Knights Templar, does not want the operation to whet too many rarefied appetites. "I am afraid speculators have written many books and promulgated too many theories," he said recently. "I once met a chap who was convinced the chapel had been built over an ET-type spacecraft and he presented an excellent case, and that's not the most fanciful theory I have heard.

"We can assume Rosslyn was a depository for important religious items, rather like a wall safe. We have no wish to excavate, merely to clarify some of the myths that have grown up due to the proliferation of books and television programmes."

Tom McRae, the Rosslyn gardener, has tried reading The Da Vinci Code but found it a bit hard going. Not as good as some of the other books written about the chapel's hidden secrets, he says. "The way people write about it you'd think that one day everything will all work out and they will find the Holy Grail. I don't know if they should try. The very fact that there is all this mystique about the place is what brings the visitors here. No mystery, no visitors.

"So many people come here from so many countries. If they go away having felt they have got something from a . . . ", he struggles for the right phrase, ". . . from a higher plane, or have some sort of satisfaction in their souls, or find it therapeutic, then why shouldn't they take what they want away from here?"