Museum and Crypt of the Capuchin Friars

The Museum and Crypt of the Capuchin Friars in Rome offers an immersive experience into the history and spirituality of the Capuchin order, featuring exhibits on their origins, saints, and a unique crypt adorned with the skeletal remains of approximately 3,700 friars.

Planning your visit

Beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione on Via Veneto lie six small chapels decorated with the bones of around 3,700 Capuchin friars, arranged into patterns — vertebrae as rosettes, pelvises as wings, skulls in arches, complete skeletons in habits standing in niches — with light fittings made from bones and ceilings worked into geometric designs.

It was not made as a curiosity. The Capuchins are a reform branch of the Franciscans committed to poverty and to contemplation of mortality, and the crypt is a memento mori: a plaque states that what you are, they once were, and what they are, you will be.

The museum above covers the order's history, spirituality and art, including a painting attributed by some to Caravaggio.

Photography is prohibited, and the atmosphere is enforced as devotional rather than sensational.

Bookable options include tours combining the crypt and museum with choral concerts. Current availability is listed below.