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.
The placard in the Crypt of the Three Skeletons reads, in five languages, "What you are now we used to be; what we are now you will be." The central skeleton holds a scythe and a pair of scales, symbols of death and of the weighing of souls. The Marquis de Sade visited in 1775 and called it the most striking thing he had ever seen.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 92,727 contributors worldwide.
