The corridor through which one accesses the four rooms of the cemetery features at the entrance the inscription “We were like you and you will be like us.” In each of the rooms are gathered the bones of about four thousand friars who died in Rome during a period ranging from the sixteenth century to 1870. The bones are arranged to form garlands and decorative elements while some skeletons are dressed in the friars’ habits and placed in niches also composed of bones.
It is believed that the creation of these crypts was due to a Frenchman who escaped the Reign of Terror in the eighteenth century and who, once arrived in Rome, wanted in this way to exorcise and symbolically put an end to the Ancien Regime. Others see in it a Masonic trace, while it is possible that it is only a work of the Capuchins as a reminder about the brevity of life and the body. It is also said that the earth found on the floor of the rooms comes from the Holy Land.
