Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini

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Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, or Our Lady of the Conception of the Capuchins, is a church in Rome, Italy, commissioned by Pope Urban VIII, whose brother, Antonio Barberini, was a Capuchin friar.

The church was designed by Antonio Casoni and built between 1626 and 1631. It is comprised of a small nave and several side chapels. The contents of the chapels are quite notable as one contains the body of St. Felix of Cantalice and another is the tomb of the Blessed Crispin of Viterbo. Several famous masterpieces hang in the chapels, including St. Michael the Archangel by Guido Reni and Gherardo delle Notti's Christ Mocked. The church is most famous, or infamous, as an ossuary, known as the Capuchin Crypt, in which is displayed the bones of over 4000 Capuchin friars, collected between the years of 1528 and 1870. The bones are fashioned into decorative displays in the Baroque and Rococo style. Their centuries-old popularity as a tourist attraction (according to the Blue Guide) once rivalled the Catacombs. They probably inspired the similar 1870 arrangement Sedlec ossuary in the Czech Republic. Their position, smack in the middle at #27 of Rome's cafe street celebrated by Fellini guarantees tourists even though their fame has dwindled.

A travel writer for the New York Times aptly caught the mood of the scene in 2003: I made my way to the Capuchin Cemetery, a short walk up the Via Veneto from the Piazza Barberini. Little has changed since Nathaniel Hawthorne described the scene in 1860: 'The arched and vaulted walls of the burial recesses are supported by massive pillars and pilasters made of thigh-bones and skulls ... there is no possibility of describing how ugly and grotesque is the effect.'

Several of the chapels still have dirt floors; the brown-cowled skeletons of monks still bow to visitors over arches of hip bones and pelvises. Unfortunately, the church is also on the highly touristed Via Veneto. I shared the crypt with an American family whose twin boys wore baseball caps and made no effort to hide their reactions. As we walked into a room where a pair of skeletons reposed in niches, one of the boys yelled: Holy cow! They've still got their teeth on! The Italian guards tried to instill an appropriate atmosphere of reverence, announcing over the loudspeakers: S-iiigh-lence! No photo, no video. Oh my God! the mother cried in the final crypt, as her gaze traveled upward.

The skeleton of an infant [actually, a Barberini princess, about five years old, donated by the family that financed the church] was fixed to the ceiling, brandishing a scythe [posing as Time, and holding a scale, to symbolize the Last Judgement] and surrounded by concentric circles of vertebrae. The father pulled out a camera and coughed loudly to cover the sound of the shutter snap. As I walked toward the exit, I heard one of the twins protest proudly to his mother: I'm not that scared, you know. I think it's cool! (Taras Grescoe, Jan. 12, 2003)