Capuchin Crypt - Impact On Visitors

Impact On Visitors

The reflection that he must someday be taken apart like an engine or a clock...and worked up into arches and pyramids and hideous frescoes, did not distress this monk in the least. I thought he even looked as if he were thinking, with complacent vanity, that his own skull would look well on top of the heap and his own ribs add a charm to the frescoes which possibly they lacked at present

—Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1869

The Marquis de Sade noted that he found his 1775 journey to the crypt was worth the effort, and Nathaniel Hawthorne noted its grotesque nature in his 1860 novel The Marble Faun.

As of 1851, the crypt was only opened to the public, in exchange for an admittance fee, for the week following All Souls Day.

From 1851 to 1852, women were not allowed admittance to the crypt.

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