From Dust to Dust

The crypts at Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini top the list of creepiest places I’ve ever visited.

Over several hundred years, Capuchin friars buried 3,700 of their brothers in this Roman church. Carefully dismembering each body, the bones remained stacked in place for many years. Then one brother, serving penance for past sins, organized them into “artful” designs.

The Crypt of the Pelvis features arrangements on the walls and ceilings using hundreds of pelvic bones. The Crypt of the Skulls comes next, stacked floor to ceiling with skulls. Room after room of skeletal compositions greet the visitor. Dried corpses recline under arches of femurs.

As bizarre as the arrangements strike the eye, the grottos also convey a sense of rest. The Catholic order who oversees these tombs insists that the display is not meant to be gruesome, but a silent reminder of the swift passage of life on earth and our own mortality.

God’s words to Adam, for dust you are and to dust you shall return, ran through my mind as I paused in each crypt. The exhibition drove home the sense of finality to life and remarkably, the hope of a brighter future in eternity.

If ever in Rome, visit these crypts. Bones of friars who served the poor in life now encourage us to consider our way of living, and our hope in something better to come.

Genesis 3 in reading the Bible in 2023

Photo thanks to Walking Tours of Rome