Da Vinci Code’s Dan Brown donates 300,000 euros to Dutch library

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – American author Dan Brown has donated 300,000 euros ($335,000) to Amsterdam’s Ritman Library, where he researched some of his best-selling novels, to help preserve its ancient works.

The funding will be used to digitize part of the library’s rare collection of books and manuscripts about the Hermetic religious tradition that Brown referenced when writing “The Lost Symbol” and “Inferno”, it said in a statement.

About 4,600 works, many dating from before 1800, will be accessible online by the public from spring 2017, it said.

Also known as the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, the library was founded in 1984 by Dutch businessman Joost Ritman.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; editing by John Stonestreet)