Capuchin Crypt, Underground burial site near Piazza Barberini in Rome, Italy.
The Capuchin Crypt is an underground burial site near Piazza Barberini in Rome, comprising six rooms linked by a narrow corridor. The walls and arches are decorated with bones and skulls from more than three thousand seven hundred friars.
The friars moved in 1631 from their old monastery to the new Church of the Immaculate Conception and brought the remains of their deceased brothers with them. Over the following centuries they arranged the bones into geometric patterns and figurative compositions.
The bones come from friars who died between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and form elaborate patterns on walls and ceilings. Latin and Italian inscriptions remind visitors that death awaits every person and life is brief.
The entrance sits below the Church of Santa Maria della Concezione on a quiet side street off Via Veneto. The rooms are small and often busy, so visiting early in the morning or late in the afternoon works best.
One of the chambers displays a fully clothed Capuchin friar whose body was naturally mummified by the dry microclimate of the crypt. The soil beneath visitors' feet comes from Jerusalem and was transported to Rome in the seventeenth century.
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Beneath the streets of Europe's cities lies an underground world of burial chambers and crypts that tell the story of how people honored their dead across centuries. These subterranean spaces range from simple rock-carved tombs to elaborate vaulted rooms, housing the remains of countless generations...
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