Thought by some to be connected to Freemasonry, the Knights Templar and even possibly to be the hiding place of the Holy Grail, Rosslyn Chapel, located in Roslin, near Edinburgh, Scotland, was featured prominently in the novel "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. On Brown's official website, under "Bizarre Facts," is the following statement:

"There exists a chapel in Great Britain that contains a ceiling from which hundreds of stone blocks protrude, jutting down to form a bizarre multi-faceted surface. Each block is carved with a symbol, seemingly at random, creating a cipher of unfathomable proportion. Modern cryptographers have never been able to break this code, and a generous reward is offered to anyone who can decipher the baffling message. In recent years, geological ultrasounds have revealed the startling presence of an enormous subterranean vault hidden beneath the chapel. This vault appears to have no entrance and no exit. To this day, the curators of the chapel have permitted no excavation."

Photography has not been allowed inside the chapel since early 2008. They will, however, "sell" you a cd of photos taken inside the church. The building has been in bad repair for some time, but work is underway to restore it to its former glory, hence the scaffolding seen in some of the photos here.