Santa Maria Della Concezione Dei Cappuccini - Literary References

Literary References

Several renowned authors visited the crypt and left descriptions. The Marquis de Sade, who visited the crypt in 1775, wrote, “I have never seen anything more striking” (Voyage d'Italie, p. 106 of the Maurice Lever edition). Mark Twain visited the crypt in the summer of 1867, and begins Chapter XXVIII of The Innocents Abroad with 5 pages of his observations. Nathaniel Hawthorne describes the crypt in his novel The Marble Faun. Additional descriptions were written by authors Tom Weil (1992), Folke Henschen (1965) and Anneli Rufus (1999). See Christine Quigley, Skulls and Skeletons, pp. 175–176.