Where Have All The Templars Gone‪?‬

About 20 years ago I was a cruise lecturer assisting a local guide on a shore excursion from the port of Monaco to nearby Nice and Eze.  In Eze, I saw a street sign referencing a Templar castle that was destroyed in 1706.  We were on a steep hill some 2,000 feet above the port of Monaco.  I wondered why the castle was so high, far too high to protect tiny Monaco below.  I wondered how Monaco could have avoided major destruction or annexation by the surrounding country of France.  After many years, I discovered that the solution to this mystery requires expanding the investigation.

Many mysteries and legends of what happened to the Templars and their wealth continue to fascinate modern readers.  Where Have All The Templars Gone? focuses on what happened to their huge wealth after the massive coordinated raids ordered by the king of France.  We use techniques of money tracing, modern communications systems, geopolitical analysis, interactive maps, and some of the techniques of "big history" to discover connections to many hitherto unsuspected places where some of that missing wealth had been taken.   Underlying themes include the difficulties that small countries have when surrounded by powerful enemies, and the tendency of conquerors to remove all signs, especially religious ones, of the countries they conquered.  Unlike many books and articles about the Templars, we show the details of the methods and analyses used to support our conclusions, so that the careful reader can verify them.

The surprising conclusions about the hiding places for Templar wealth include some of the smallest or richest places in Europe.  We also present new information on how some of this wealth was moved to the famous French town of Rennes-le-Chateaux.

Where Have All The Templars Gone? contains 57 maps and images.