Located on the upscale Via Veneto in Rome, Santa Maria della Concezione is dedicated to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. It was built in 1626 by Cardinal Antonio Barberini, the younger brother of Pope Urban VIII, who was a Capuchin friar. Antonio Casoni and another Capuchin Friar, Michele da Bergamo, were the architects and they built a beautiful but simple church. The real interest in this site, however, is what lies below. When the Capuchins moved from their location at the Quirinal to the Via Veneto site, they brought the bones of around 4000 friars and placed them in a cemetery under the church, arranged in patterns on the walls and ceilings. The result is eerie and very unusual. Find a holiday rental in Rome and see it yourself.
The crypt is located under the chapels to the right of the church. While some of the bones are arranged in the patterns on the walls and ceilings, something akin to mosaics, there are other whole skeletons set into niches and dressed in Capuchin robes. Even the fixtures of the space are lined with bones such as a chandelier swaying gently from the ceiling, covered in small vertebrae. There are six differently themed and decorated chapels with macabre appearances. Photos are not allowed and visitors are asked to dress conservatively in order to show respect to the friars still on site. The whole expedition only lasts about 15 minutes but the impact is more than words can convey or than one would imagine so short a time could leave.
The crypt’s bones belong primarily to Capuchin monks buried here between 1528 and 1870. However, when the crypt was being constructed, old Roman tombs were discovered and incorporated to the Baroque and Rocco displays of the monks, along with the foreboding statement: “What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.” Barberini himself is buried in a simple grave under the altar where there is a tombstone with an inscription reading, “Here lies dust, ashes, nothing.”
Visitors first began trickling into the crypt in the 18th century but it was only officially opened to the public in 1851.
Famous visitors such Marquise de Sade visited the crypt, in 1775, and commented in his travel journal “I have never seen anything more striking.” Mark Twain dedicated five pages of his book, Innocents Abroad, to it, calling the crypt a place of “picturesque horrors”.
The crypt usually doesn't have queues and is open from 9am to 7pm with a donation of a euro required to enter. Any visitors to Rome should really try and find the fifteen minutes required to see this extraordinary sight.
Visitors first began trickling into the crypt in the 18th century but it was only officially opened to the public in 1851.
Famous visitors such Marquise de Sade visited the crypt, in 1775, and commented in his travel journal “I have never seen anything more striking.” Mark Twain dedicated five pages of his book, Innocents Abroad, to it, calling the crypt a place of “picturesque horrors”.
The crypt usually doesn't have queues and is open from 9am to 7pm with a donation of a euro required to enter. Any visitors to Rome should really try and find the fifteen minutes required to see this extraordinary sight.
Photo credits
picture 1: Dnalor 01 / CC BY-SA 3.0;
picture 2: Geobia / CC BY-SA 3.0;
picture 3: Tessier / CC BY 2.5
picture 1: Dnalor 01 / CC BY-SA 3.0;
picture 2: Geobia / CC BY-SA 3.0;
picture 3: Tessier / CC BY 2.5
