Capuchin Crypt and Museum Historical Timeline

Last updated on September 29, 2026

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A Barberini church, finished in five years, with an ossuary installed in it the same year it was completed.

Chronology

4 October 1626 — Pope Urban VIII blesses the first stone, after which his Capuchin brother Cardinal Antonio Marcello Barberini begins construction, to designs by Felice Antonio Casoni and Michele da Bergamo. Structural impact: a single-nave church with ten side chapels is begun. What you see today: the plan, and Urban VIII's coat of arms at the base of the two columns of the marble main altar he ordered.
8 September 1630 — the first mass is celebrated. Structural impact: the church is usable a year before it is finished. What you see today: a working parish, not a monument.
1630 — Antonio Barberini commissions Guido Reni to paint an Archangel Michael for the church. Structural impact: none. What you see today: the altarpiece in the first chapel on the right, completed in 1636 — and the legend that grew around it.
1631 — construction is completed. In the same year Cardinal Antonio Barberini, himself a Capuchin, orders the remains of thousands of Capuchin friars exhumed and transferred from the friary on Via dei Lucchesi into the crypt beneath the church. Structural impact: the crypt is fitted out with the bones as its decoration. What you see today: five chapels whose walls are made of the dead.
17th century — the chapels are filled with paintings: Reni's St Michael, Honthorst's Christ Mocked, Balassi's Transfiguration commissioned by Taddeo Barberini, Lanfranco's Nativity, Domenichino's Stigmatization of St Francis, Baccio Ciarpi's Prayer in Gethsemane and Andrea Sacchi's Saint Anthony. Structural impact: ten chapels are furnished. What you see today: a Baroque picture collection in a church most people walk past.
18th century — the Marquis de Sade visits and writes that “a German priest of this house has executed a funerary monument worthy of an English genius”. Structural impact: none. What you see today: the earliest famous outside verdict on the crypt, and still the most quoted — alongside the friars’ own admission that no documents survive to say who actually made it, so every attribution is a guess.
18th–19th century — the crypt becomes one of Rome's best-known sights, its popularity as a tourist attraction rivalling the Catacombs. Structural impact: none. What you see today: a visitor route that has existed for centuries.
1870 — the Sedlec ossuary in the Czech Republic is created; it and the Skull Chapel in Poland are both said to have been inspired by this crypt. Structural impact: none here. What you see today: the original of a form that spread across Europe.
recent decades — the friars open a museum alongside the crypt, holding the order's paintings and objects, among them a San Francesco in meditazione attributed to Caravaggio. Structural impact: the convent gains public exhibition rooms. What you see today: a visit that is a museum first and the crypt last.

Verified against Wikipedia, September 2026.

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Sources & verification Covers the sourced claims on this page.

Checked against Wikipedia — The church was designed by the architects Felice Antonio Casoni (1559-1634) and Michele da Bergamo (?-1641); Pope Urban VIII blessed its first stone on 4 October 1626, after which his Capuchin brother Cardinal Antonio Marcello Barberini began constructing it; its first mass was held on 8 September 1630 and its construction was completed in 1631, and it comprises a small nave and 10 side chapels, The church is accessed via a scissor staircase on which the brick facade with white stone pilasters rises, the interior has a single nave with five chapels on each side, Liborio Coccetti painted an Assumption on the barrel vault ceiling, the main altar is built in marble by order of Pope Urban VIII with his coat of arms at the base of the two columns, and the altarpiece The Conception is by Gioacchino Bombelli from the original by Lanfranco which was destroyed by fire, The first chapel on the right has a dramatic altarpiece of St. Michael the Archangel Defeating Satan of about 1635 by Guido Reni and Christ Mocked by Gerard van Honthorst; two of the most important and noble families of Rome were the rival Barberini and the Pamphilj, and in 1630 Antonio Barberini commissioned from Reni a painting of the Archangel Michael for the Capuchin church, and according to a legend Reni had heard that Cardinal Giovanni Battista Pamphilj had defamed him or had in some way offended his reputation, so that the painting, completed in 1636, gave rise to a story that Reni had represented Satan, crushed under St Michael's foot, with the facial features of Cardinal Pamphilj in revenge for the slight, The second chapel on the right has The Transfiguration by Mario Balassi commissioned by Taddeo Barberini and a Nativity of about 1632 by Giovanni Lanfranco, the third has the Stigmatization of St. Francis by Domenichino, the fourth Prayer in Gethsemane of about 1632 by Baccio Ciarpi and the fifth Saint Anthony by Andrea Sacchi, The crypt is located just under the church, and Cardinal Antonio Barberini, who was a member of the Capuchin order, in 1631 ordered the remains of thousands of Capuchin friars exhumed and transferred from the friary Via dei Lucchesi to the crypt; the underground crypt is divided into five chapels lit only by dim natural light seeping in through cracks and small fluorescent lamps, and the crypt walls are decorated with the remains in elaborate fashion, making this crypt a macabre work of art, with some of the skeletons intact and draped with Franciscan habits but for the most part individual bones used to create elaborate ornamental designs, The crypt originated at a period of a rich and creative cult for their dead, when great spiritual masters meditated and preached with a skull in hand, and a plaque in one of the chapels reads, in three languages, "What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be", which is a memento mori; the popularity of the crypt as a tourist attraction once rivalled the Catacombs, and the Sedlec ossuary of 1870 in the Czech Republic and the Skull Chapel in Poland are said to have been inspired by it (September 2026).
Checked against Museo e Cripta dei Cappuccini — The Marquis de Sade wrote of the crypt that a German priest of this house had executed a funerary monument worthy of an English genius; the place consists of a corridor some thirty metres long, flanked today by six rooms, in which the mortal remains of about 3,700 dead, for the most part Capuchin friars, have been gathered; and tradition holds that the earth of this cemetery is holy ground carried here from Palestine or even from Jerusalem, The friars state that in the absence of historical certainty, because the documents are missing, imagination has been resorted to: it has been suggested that during the years of the Terror in France some Capuchins took refuge in Rome rather than renounce their faith, and more than one hypothesis is advanced, that the work is that of a grotesque hermitic genius, or of a friar's patience, or of a man of most ardent faith who almost jokes with death while thinking of the Resurrection (September 2026).

Capuchin Crypt and Museum Historical Timeline

Chronology

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