This is one of the four surviving round churches in England. It was designed as such to imitate the Crusaders' holiest place, the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The Church was built by the Knights Templar, the order of crusading monks founded to protect pilgrims on their way to and from Jerusalem in the 12th century.
King James I granted the whole area of the Temple to Inner and Middle Temple in 1608 and they have maintained the church since. Perhaps that is why it is also known as the Mother Church of the Common Law.
This is not a tomb
It was here that Robert Langdon realised that the church only hold the effigies of knights and not their actual tombs.
''In London lies a knight a Pope interred
His labour's fruit a Holy wrath incurred
You seek the orb that ought be on his tomb
It speaks of Rosy flesh and seeded womb''
The Da Vinci Code
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