 Supporters of the hypothesis that Rennes and its environs enshrine unsolved enigmas have suggested that Saunière's estate was set up on a large-scale checkerboard, while others have suggested that Saunière produced a Mirror image of selected architectural features of his property.They also claim that Maurice Barrès's novels Roman à clef and The Sacred Hill are largely based on the Rennes-le-Château story involving Bérenger Saunière (while novels by Jules Verne are cited to show that the enigma predates Abbé Saunière).The village received up to 100,000 tourists each year at the height of popularity of Dan Brown's bestselling novel "The Da Vinci Code".