Talk:Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini

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[edit] Location

It might help to say where this church is! -- Necrothesp 00:00, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Via Veneto, 27 ROMA close to piazza barberini

'Done Gohiking 21:41, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not Wiki Format

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)

'I moved this here until it can be wikified....personal narrative too long for Wikipedia Gohiking 21:41, 19 December 2006 (UTC)