Place du Carrousel

Place du Carrousel is the vast, open plaza that separates the Tuileries Gardens from the Louvre Palace, forming the northern approach to the museum's main entrance. Its name derives from the equestrian displays once held there, but in the novel it functions as a threshold between the everyday Paris of the Tuileries and the secret-laden world of the Louvre. The square is dominated by the controversial glass pyramid—La Pyramide—designed by I. M. Pei, which serves as the museum's main entrance and is encircled by seven triangular pools with illuminated fountains. Langdon, arriving by police car, crosses this plaza under the mist of the fountains, feeling he is "crossing an imaginary threshold into another world" as he approaches the pyramid to meet Captain Bezu Fache. The square is also the site of the Arc du Carrousel, a giant stone archway at the eastern end of the Tuileries, from which four of the finest art museums in the world can be seen at each point of the compass.

Escape and the Inverted Pyramid

Place du Carrousel is the scene of Langdon and Sophie's dramatic escape from the Louvre. After Sophie tricks the police by throwing a bar of soap containing a GPS tracking dot onto a passing truck, they flee the museum and run across the plaza to Sophie's red SmartCar, which is parked there. As they speed away, Langdon warns Sophie not to take a shortcut across the central grass circle of the Carrousel, because the hedges hide a perilous chasm—La Pyramide Inversée, the inverted pyramid skylight that could swallow their car. This inverted pyramid, a huge glass structure hanging from the ceiling of the underground entresol, is later revealed to be the key to the novel's final mystery.

The Final Revelation

In the epilogue, Langdon returns to Place du Carrousel after recovering from his ordeal. He follows the bronze medallions embedded in the ground that mark the ancient Parisian Rose Line—the world's first prime meridian—which leads him directly to the Carrousel. There, he steps over the hedges into the grassy circle and peers down at the inverted pyramid. Below it, on the floor of the underground chamber, stands a tiny, three-foot-tall pyramid. Langdon realizes that the inverted pyramid represents the Chalice (the feminine), and the miniature pyramid below represents the Blade (the masculine), together forming the "blade and chalice" guarding the Holy Grail. He falls to his knees, understanding that the Grail—the bones of Mary Magdalene—rests beneath the starry skies, in the hidden chamber beneath the Louvre's inverted pyramid, at the heart of Place du Carrousel.