Roman Crypt So Creepy It Spooked Marquis De Sade

Italy's Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini Crypt, known as the Capuchin Crypt, holds nearly 4,000 Capuchin friars' bodies. This Roman mausoleum resembles a mummy museum, with thousands of artfully displayed bones and skeletons. Morbid visitors find it as awe-inspiring as any beautiful Catholic church, with grimly decorated walls, ceilings, and chapels. Rooms like the 'Crypt of Shin Bones and Thigh Bones' and the 'Crypt of Pelvises' showcase different body parts. A plaque greets visitors with a stark message: 'What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.' In 1631, Capuchin monks moved to this church from their old monastery near the Trevi Fountain, bringing their deceased friars' bodies with them on Pope Urban VIII's orders. As monks were buried and exhumed, their bones were disassembled and put on display. The crypt deeply affected American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote, 'Not here can we feel ourselves immortal.' Marquis de Sade, a French libertine, visited in 1775 and noted it was a funerary art monument 'worthy of an English mind' - he'd 'never seen anything more impressive.'