Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini

Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini is a plain Baroque church on the Via Veneto whose fame rests entirely underground. Built in the 1620s for the Capuchin friars under Cardinal Antonio Barberini, its upper church holds fine paintings, including a celebrated Saint Michael the Archangel by Guido Reni, but most visitors descend below for something far stranger.

Beneath the church lies the Capuchin Crypt, a series of small chapels decorated with the bones of some 3,700 friars who died between the 16th and 19th centuries. Skulls, vertebrae and pelvises are arranged into rosettes, arches, chandeliers and borders, and several robed skeletons stand among the patterns. A plaque delivers the message plainly: what you are now, we once were; what we are now, you will be.

The display is not macabre showmanship but a Baroque meditation on mortality, a memento mori intended to remind the living of the shortness of earthly life. An adjoining museum tells the story of the Capuchin order, its charitable work and its austere spirituality, setting the crypt in its religious context.

For visitors the church and crypt sit at the lower end of the Via Veneto, moments from Piazza Barberini and its Bernini fountains. A modest admission covers the museum and crypt, where photography is forbidden and a respectful hush is expected. The visit is brief but memorable, and pairs naturally with a walk up the elegant Via Veneto or over to the nearby Palazzo Barberini. Those unsettled by human remains may prefer to admire the church above. The crypt's soil, said to have been carried from Jerusalem, and its guttering candlelight lend the chapels a strange solemnity that lingers long after the brief descent is over.