14 and 41 are famously Bach numbers. Google it

14. (B=2, A=1, C=3, H=8), the sum is 14.

41 (J-S-B-A-C-H): (J=9, S=18, B=2, A=1, C=3, H=8), the sum is 41. 41 is also the “crab” or reversed mirror of 14.

Can on ladder = Ladder Canon
This is about Bach’s Canon per Tonos BWV 1079 No. 5 from the Musical Offering. It famously goes up 7 steps (tones) then returns to where it started. Godel Escher Bach book talked about it in 1979.
The ladder has 7 steps and the paint is about tone/toner.
The rattling door handle that shakes next to ladder represents rattlesnake, so it’s snakes and ladders logic about returning to bottom of ladder after 7 steps.

14 and 41 are mirrored so we should mirror.

Reversing the BATON also on the ladder you get “NOT A B”. Bach would sign his name in his music with B♭, A, C, B♮, but in German at the time they used H instead of B♮. So he could sign B-A-C-H as signature in his music.

The phonetic reversal of BACH is CRAB. And a crab canon is a palindrome canon. The most famous is by Bach and also in the same Musical Offering BWV 1079, which has 10 canons (for the 10 commandments).

The case on floor under 41 has an X (for 10) made out of strap, and STRAP reverses to PARTS. Ten parts. There are 10 canons/commandments, so this correct and suggests door 41 above it is correct door.

The BATON is telling us the truth (NOT A B) in reverse. So we should use 41 rather than the main Bach number of 14.

The text says “after a short rest, we came to…”. A “minim” rest is palindrome and a *half* rest. The correct door 41 is exactly *half* open.

(The room seems to be about the SATOR square. Room 37 on the other side with rattling door has NET below TEN. It symbolises TENET over this room. We have the 14 and 41 mirrored here and the ballet poster is OPERA so we can get AREPO. Earliest known SATOR square was found in Pompeii – just before the famous volcanic eruption happened.)

Ball-and-claw furniture feet typically depict a dragon’s claw holding the ball. Could it be that here we have a human’s hand, and the room is gigantic, because this is a dragon’s den? That as human furniture has dragon claws, a dragon’s furniture has human hands?

Room 37 has a snakes and ladders theme. You avoid the door with rattling sound, which has snake net, which is this room 10. And ladder was correct door in room 37.

Here in room 10 the snakes and ladders theme continues. The doorknob rattles like a snake and the ladder has the correct door.

We’ve tried calling them STEPS, DANCERS…DANCES seems as sensible a read on those images as anything else.

I’m not sure that would suggest 41. I don’t see “plenty of clues” indicating 4 and/or 1. The clearest meaning of “ascend” would point to the ladder, which of course sits in front of a room we can’t go to–but then, the text strongly suggests that we get to that room somehow. I suppose you could also read it as suggesting that we ascend the volcano, but that seems less intuitive.

Maybe it’s a word with a purpose yet unknown to us.