The Best Sight in Repubblica and Quirinale, Rome

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We've compiled the best of the best in Repubblica and Quirinale - browse our top choices for the top things to see or do during your stay.

Capuchin Museum

Quirinale
The Capuchin Crypt is a small space comprising several tiny chapels located beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini on the Via Veneto near Piazza Barberini in Rome, Italy. It contains the skeletal remains of 4,000 bodies believed
Luigi Roscia | Dreamstime.com

Devoted to teaching visitors about the Capuchin order, this museum is mainly notable for its strangely touching and beautiful crypt under the church of Santa Maria della Concezione. The bones of some 4,000 friars are arranged in odd decorative designs around the shriveled and decayed remains of their kinsmen, a macabre reminder of the impermanence of earthly life. As one sign proclaims: "What you are, we once were. What we are, you someday will be."

Upstairs in the church, the first chapel on the right contains Guido Reni's mid-17th-century Archangel St. Michael Trampling the Devil. The painting caused great scandal after an astute contemporary observer remarked that the face of the devil bore a surprising resemblance to Pope Innocent X, archenemy of Reni's Barberini patrons. Compare the devil with the bust of the pope that you saw in the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj and judge for yourself.