The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, a baffling cipher found near the body. As Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci - clues visible to see yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

After an event at which futurist Edmond Kirsch is to announce a groundbreaking discovery erupts into chaos, Robert Langdon rushes to Barcelona to locate a cryptic password that will reveal Kirsch's secret before it is lost forever.