Hidden Rome

Discover the lesser-known treasures hidden throughout the Immortal City. Your guide will show you some of the more architecturally unusual buildings, from a seventeenth century Christian crypt to two of the most singular basilicas in Rome.

Behold the morbid beauty of the Capuchin Crypt below Santa Maria della Concezione del Cappuccini, a church near the Piazza Barberini dedicated to the Catholic Capuchin Order. The museum is decorated with human bones from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, and the artwork throughout is meant to remind visitors of their own mortality. It begins with the Crypt of the Resurrection, which features a depiction of Jesus and Lazarus, whom Jesus resurrected from death. The Crypt of the Three Skeletons, the final chapel in the crypt, holds a placard with a profound and chilling reminder: ‘Quello che voi siete noi eravamo, quello che noi siamo voi sarete’, meaning, “Exactly what you are now, we once were. What we are now will become you.” Memento mori, indeed.

The Saint Clemente Basilica stands conveniently close to the Colosseum. What makes this minor basilica special is its literal layers of history, where you can descend from the church built at the end of the 11th century, down through a much older basilica secreting away some of the Middle Ages’ most beautiful frescoes, and into a first century Roman temple of Mithras.

The fifth century’s Church of Santo Stefano Rotondo al Celio, meaning “Saint Stephen in the Round”, is beloved for its circular structure, complete with marble columns and round walkways. Like the Saint Clemente Basilica, archaeologists discovered that this basilica was built atop the remains of an ancient Mithraeum.