Angels and Demons Tour: the Altars, the Pantheon and the Castle

Dan Brown's novel sends its hero round Rome after four altars of science, and this walk follows that trail with a guide who keeps the fiction and the history apart. It starts at Santa Maria della Vittoria, where Bernini's Saint Teresa is the one stop at which book and reality line up completely: the sculpture is as described, and the church is small enough that you cannot miss it. Then the Pantheon, which in the novel is the false lead, the place the trail does not actually begin. Then St Peter's Square, and finally a circuit of Castel Sant'Angelo, where the story ends and where a real corridor does connect the castle to the Vatican. The group is shared and small. The guide covers what Brown invented, what he borrowed and what he got wrong, along with the art and architecture of each building on its own terms. One of the four altars in the book, for instance, is not by Bernini at all. The tour ends in front of Castel Sant'Angelo, though the finishing point can change.