Sion-les-Mines

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Sion-les-Mines is a commune in France.

[edit] References in popular culture

It has been mistakenly believed to have been the inspiration for the name of the association Priory of Sion, created in 1956 by con-man Pierre Plantard. A photograph of Jean-Luc Chaumeil pointing to a roadsign name of Sion-les-Mines in one of his books has mistakenly been misinterpreted.

According to the 1956 Statutes of the Priory of Sion lodged in the sub Prefecture of St Julien-en-Genevois (Article III, section c), Pierre Plantard named the Priory of Sion after a local mountain near to Annemasse (where he was living during the 1950s), called Montagne-de-Sion.

The Priory of Sion was alleged to have been a thousand-year-old secret society, but was later proven to be a fraud. It became the subject of international attention though when it was listed as a "factual" society by the 2003 bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code.

For more details on this topic, see Priory of Sion.