Geoscience Reference
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it into the picture, along with other instruments, papers, music and art works to
flatter the subjects of the portrait by implying how cultured they were). There are
also some fine Islamic celestial spheres and other scientific instruments in the
Richelieu Wing, Entresol, Room 5.
In Dan Brown's topic The Da Vinci Code, the hero feels the Arago disks draw
him to the pyramid. Dan Brown says that it has 666 glass panes (a number symbolic
of Satan), but this is untrue. Below in the subterranean Carrousel shopping area is
a second pyramid, inverted and hanging from the ceiling. On the floor below its tip
stands a third pyramid, small and made of stone. The tips of the pyramids point at
each other and are said in the novel to mark a hidden vault of documents as well as
the tomb of Mary Magdalene. It is hinted that MM Mitterand and Pei were co-
conspirators in the secret marking of these religious treasures for those in the know.
All this seems unlikely, but it is a fact, however, that the Pyramid marks the Paris
Meridian which continues to the north.
Palais Royal
Across the Rue de Rivoli, running alongside the Louvre, is the Palais Royal. The
meridian continues across the Rue de Rivoli clipping the corner of the Palais Royal.
Medallion Number 90 lies under the colonnade to the west of the Palais.
The Palais Royal was built in 1784 and based on St. Mark's Square in Venice.
At the outset its arcades were designated for luxury shopping and it was (and
remains) a very fashionable place. It housed the mansion of Cardinal Richelieu,
houses the theatre of the Comédie Française and at the Rue de Rivoli's end is an
installation sculpture known as the Columns of Buren made of black and white
marble and slate pillars spread over the southern end of the courtyard. Its sculptor
was Daniel Buren (1938- ) its colonnades house fashionable shops and restaurants;
at the present time it is a treat to take lunch under a shady umbrella of a restaurant
of the Palais Royal, listening to a passing accordion player and watching lunchtime
parties of office workers playing boules on the gravely paths and open areas.
Originally its security guards were the King's Swiss Guards, who were instructed
to refuse entry to “soldiers, domestics, or persons who wore caps or jackets, stu-
dents, street urchins, beggars, dogs and artisans.” This strict dress code of former
times and its peaceful present-day elegance gives no hint about its former night-
time decadence, when it was a place to meet, drink, flirt, quarrel, gamble, fornicate,
and fight. The 18 th century poet Jacques Delille, known as Abbot Delille, wrote:
Fields, meadows, woods, and flowers
Do not grace this garden.
But while we are there and do wrong
We can also put our watches right.
This refers to a meridian curiosity standing in the south of the lawns of the garden-
a so-called “midday cannon” in the tradition of cannons that were fired from observatories
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