CIMITERO STORICO DEI CAPPUCCINI

The cemetery is located adjacent to the Capuchin Church of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception, built in 1624 for Cardinal Antonio Barberini cappuccino and adorned with paintings by Pietro da Cortona and Domenichino.

The corridor through which you access the four rooms of the entrance to the cemetery has written We were like you and you will like us. In each of the rooms are gathered the bones of about four brothers who died in Rome in a period from the sixteenth century to 1870. Bones are positioned so as to form garlands and decorative elements while some skeletons are dressed in the know of the friars and placed in niches they also made up of bones. It is believed that the realization of these crypts is due to a Frenchman escaped from the Reign of Terror in the eighteenth century and that once arrived in Rome wanted it this way and put a symbolic end to exorcise the Ancien Regime. Some, however, see this as a sign of the Masonic type, while it is possible that it is only a work of the Capuchins as a warning about the brevity of life and body. It is said that the land that lies on the floor of the rooms comes from the Holy Land.

Study tours and tickets:

http://www.cappucciniviaveneto.it/il_museo_3.html