La Pyramide Inversée

"La Pyramide Inversée" ("The Inverted Pyramid") is a skylight constructed in an underground shopping mall in front of the Louvre Museum in France. It may be thought of as a smaller sibling of the more famous Louvre Pyramid proper, yet turned upside down: its upturned base is easily overlooked from outside. It is also known for being the fictional resting place of the Holy Grail in "The Da Vinci Code".

Design

The pyramid marks the intersection of two main walkways and orients visitors towards the museum entrance. Tensioned against a 30-ton, 13.3-meter square steel caisson frame, the inverted pyramidal shape in laminated glass points downward towards the floor. The tip of the pyramid is suspended 1.4 meters (a little more than 4.5 feet) above floor level. Individual glass panes in the pyramid, 30 mm thick, are connected by stainless-steel crosses 381 mm in length. After dark, the structure is illuminated by a frieze of spotlights.

Directly below the tip of the downwards-pointing glass pyramid, a small stone pyramid (about one meter/three feet high) is stationed on the floor, as if mirroring the larger structure above: The tips of the two pyramids almost touch.

"La Pyramide Inversée" was designed by architects I.M. Pei, Cobb Freed and Partners, and installed as part of the Phase II government renovation of the Louvre Museum. It was completed in 1993. In 1995, it was a finalist in the Benedictus Awards, described by the jury as "a remarkable anti-structure … a symbolic use of technology … a piece of sculpture. It was meant as an object but it is an object to transmit light."

"La Pyramide Inversée" in "The Da Vinci Code"

The Inverted Pyramid figures prominently on the concluding pages of Dan Brown's international bestseller "The Da Vinci Code". The author, or rather the protagonist of his novel, Robert Langdon, reads esoteric symbolism into the two pyramids: The Inverted Pyramid is perceived as a Chalice, a feminine symbol, whereas the stone pyramid below is interpreted as a Blade, a masculine symbol: the whole structure could thus express the union of the genders. Moreover, Brown's protagonist concludes that the tiny stone pyramid is actually only the apex of a larger pyramid (possibly the same size as the inverted pyramid above), embedded in the floor as a secret chamber. This chamber is said to enclose the body of Mary Magdalene.

At the climax of the movie made from Brown's novel, the camera moves through the entire glass pyramid from above and then dives into the floor below to reveal the supposed hidden chamber under the tiny stone pyramid, containing the sarcophagus with the remains of Mary Magdalene.

This theory has been very skepticized due to The Louvre's pyramid being removed for maintennce and then photographed as you see to the right.

Other esoteric interpretations

Brown was not the first writer to offer esoteric interpretations of the Inverted Pyramid. In Raphaël Aurillac's work "Le guide du Paris maçonnique" the author declares that the Louvre used to be a Masonic temple. To Aurillac, the various glass pyramids constructed in recent decades include Masonic symbolism. Aurillac sees the downward-pointing pyramid as expressing the Rosicrucian motto V.I.T.R.I.O.L. ("Visita Interiorem Terrae Rectificandoque / Invenies Occultum Lapidem", "Visit the interior of the earth and… you will find the secret stone"). Another writer on Masonic architecture, Dominique Setzepfandt, sees the two pyramids as suggesting "the compass and square that together form the Seal of Solomon" (quoted in "Code Da Vinci: L'enquête" by Marie-France Etchegoin and Frédéric Lenoir).

According to I. M. Pei's biographer Carter Wiseman, he is interested almost solely in abstract geometrical forms. If so, no deeper symbolic meaning should be sought in the inverted pyramid.

External links

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* [http://www.hotpixel.net/PyramideInversee/ La Pyramide Inversée — Closeup Shots]
* [http://www.louvre.fr/ Louvre website]
* [http://tions.net/CA256EA900408BD5/vwWWW/outdoor~02~21#louvre The Paris Meridian, or "Rose Line"]