Santa Maria Della Concezione Dei Cappuccini Church

The crypt is located just under Santa Maria della Concezione, a church commissioned by Pope Urban VIII in 1626. The pope's brother, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, who was the Capuchin order, in 1631 ordered the remains thousands Capuchin friars exhumed and transferred from the friary Via dei Lucchesi to the crypt. The bones were arranged along the walls, and the friars began to bury their own dead here, as well as the bodies poor Romans, whose tomb was under the floor 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 4,000 friars buried between 1500-1870, during which time the Roman Catholic Church permitted burial in and under churches. The underground crypt is divided into five chapels, lit only by dim natural light seeping in through cracks, and small fluorescent lamps. The crypt walls are decorated with the remains in elaborate fashion, making this crypt a macabre work art. Some the skeletons are intact and draped with Franciscan habits, but for the most part, individual bones are used to create elaborate ornamental designs.
The crypt originated at a period a rich and creative cult for their dead; great spiritual masters meditated and preached with a skull in hand.
A plaque in one the chapels reads, in three languages, "What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be." This is a memento mori.