The Capuchin Crypt: Where Death Becomes Beautiful
There is an enigmatic and mystical place in Rome that fascinates anyone who decides to visit it at least once. Here, in the Capuchin Crypt, death makes itself beautiful…
Today we take you to a truly fascinating and grotesque place in Rome: we are in the Crypt of the Capuchins which, together with the Museum, is located inside the splendid Church of Santa Maria della Concezione, better known as the "Church of the Capuchins", not far from Piazza Barberini.
The church was built a short distance from the Barberini family palace, between 1624 and 1630, by order of Pope Urban VIII, designed by the architect Casoni, in honor of his brother, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, who was part of the Capuchin order and whose tomb is still preserved inside the church itself.
Of all the undergrounds of Rome, the Capuchin Crypt is, without a doubt, the most interesting and unexpected: it is, in fact, expertly decorated with the bones of at least 4000 Capuchin friars who died between 1528 and 1870 and recovered from the mass graves of the old cemetery of the Capuchin Order.
Five chapels, one after the other along the corridor that leads to the exit, have this singular decoration: each of these has a name that recalls the bones with which the decorations were made (pelvises, skulls, tibias, femurs, etc.). Every other, small detail is made with human bones, from the chandeliers made of shoulder blades and jaws to the clocks made of vertebrae and phalanges.
The Capuchin Crypt can be visited every day from 10.00 to 19.00 and is located in Via Vittorio Veneto number 27. .
