The corridor leading to the four rooms of the cemetery bears the inscription at the entrance: We were like you and you will be like us. In each of the rooms, the bones of about four thousand friars who died in Rome from the 1500s to 1870 are gathered. The bones are arranged to form garlands and decorative elements, while some skeletons are dressed in the friars’ habits and placed in niches also made of bones.
It is believed that the creation of these crypts is due to a Frenchman who fled the period of the Terror in the 18th century and, upon arriving in Rome, wanted to exorcise and symbolically end the Ancien Régime in this way. Others see Masonic traces, while it is also possible that it is simply a Capuchin work reminding us of the brevity of life and the body. It is also said that the soil on the floors of the rooms comes from the Holy Land.
