The Capuchin Crypt is a small space comprising several tiny chapels located beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini on the Via Veneto near Piazza Barberini in Rome, Italy. It contains the skeletal remains of 3,700 bodies believed to be Capuchin friars buried by their order. The order insists that the display is not meant to be macabre, but a silent reminder of the swift passage of life on Earth and of mortality.

Crypt construction

When the friars arrived at the church in 1631, moving from the old monastery, they brought 300 cartloads of the remains of deceased friars. Fr. Michael of Bergamo oversaw the arrangement of the bones in the burial crypt. The soil in the crypt was brought from Jerusalem, by order of Pope Urban VIII. As friars died during the lifetime of the crypt, the longest-buried friar was exhumed to make room for the newly deceased, who was buried without a coffin, and the newly reclaimed bones were added to the decorative motifs. Bodies typically spent 30 years decomposing in the soil, before being exhumed. The bones were arranged along the walls, and the friars began to bury their own dead there, as well as the bodies of poor Romans, whose tomb was under the floor of the present Mass chapel. Here the Capuchins would come to pray and reflect each evening before retiring for the night. The crypt, or ossuary, now contains the remains of 4,000 friars buried between 1500 and 1870, during which time the Roman Catholic Church permitted burial in and under churches. As of 1851, the crypt was only opened to the public in exchange for an admittance fee for the week following All Souls Day. , it is open to the public daily except for certain holidays. From 1851 to 1852, women were not admitted to the crypt.

Crypt rooms

There are six total rooms in the crypt, five featuring a unique display of human bones believed to have been taken from the bodies of friars who had died between 1528 and 1870.

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