Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini (Virgin Mary of Conception of the Capuchins) is a church close to Palazzo Barberini, commissioned by Pope Urban VIII in honor of his brother Antonio Barberini, who belonged to the Capuchin order. The main attraction is certainly the crypt/charnel house, decorated with the bones of about 4000 priests collected between 1528 and 1870 from the old Capuchin cemetery. The choice to decorate the crypt this way may seem morbid and dark, but in reality it is a way to exorcise death and underline how the body is nothing but the container of the soul, and as such the former may be re-used in a different way once the latter has left it. At the entrance of the crypt there is a plaque stating: “That which you are is what we were; that which we are is what you will be”.
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