#capuchin crypt

The Capuchin Crypt is a 17th century ossuary located below Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini (Our Lady of the Conception of the Capuchins) located in Rome, Italy. Led by Cardinal Antonio Barberini, a member of the Capuchin order, the church’s construction began in 1626 and was completed by 1631.

When the friars moved in, they brought 300 cartloads of remains with them. A friar by the name of Michael of Bergamo oversaw arranging the remains within the crypt. They also continued to add additional remains as friars in the order died along with poor Romans who couldn’t pay for burial. When a new body was to be added, they would exhume the oldest buried friar to make room and then add those bones to the decorative motifs. Today, there are over 3,700 bodies believed to be friars buried in the crypt.

But it didn’t always look like it does today!

In fact, there’s a bit of a mystery that surrounds who transformed the crypt from a simple ossuary into the artful resting place it is now. Though the likeliest explanation is that it was done by one or several artists within the Capuchin order who were often in residence in the friary (Caravaggio is suspected to be one of them), there are legends about a penitent-but-unidentified artist who did the work. Writings from the Marquis de Sade, who visited the crypt during his travels in Rome, suggest the artist might even be a German priest by the name of Norman Baumgartner. However, the identity of the artist has never been confirmed.

Though access to the crypt used to be restricted to the days surrounding All Soul’s Day, when a mass is still typically held in the crypt’s chapel for the holiday, it is open to museum goers for most of the year (as of 2018, anyway, and the most recent article I could find confirmed this was still the case in 2022). There are 5 separate rooms that display bones in the crypt and they’re pretty neat. Unlike what you might expect, each room (or alcove) is named and contain intentionally decorative arrangements.

One of the most interesting rooms, or chapels, is the Crypt of the Three Skeletons, as seen below:

From the Wikipedia page on the Crypt:

The center skeleton is enclosed in an oval, the symbol of life coming to birth. In its right hand it holds a scythe, symbol of death which cuts down everyone, like grass in a field, while its left hand holds the scales, symbolizing the good and evil deeds weighed by God when he judges the human soul. A placard in five languages declares: "What you are now we used to be; what we are now you will be."

And this clock nearby made of pelvic bones, femurs, and thigh bones:

And this butterfly motif from the Crypt of the Skulls:

Normal visitors to the crypt are not allowed to take pictures (as was the case when I visited in 2018), so all of these photos have been sourced from this Smithsonian Magazine article which I do recommend giving a read if you’re interested in learning more or seeing more of the crypt!

While many people who have visited the crypt at Santa Maria have declared it a macabre sight, much like the Mourn Watch, the Capuchin order itself maintains it is meant as a silent reminder of mortality and how fleeting life can be.

A crypt-sized memento mori :)

sources:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/decorated-with-4000-skeletons-this-roman-church-will-have-you-pondering-your-own-mortality-180981573/

https://www.turismoroma.it/en/node/222