Saturday, April 19, 2014

Rome Day 2: Rome Crime Museum and Capuchin Crypt

I woke up nice and early to visit the Rome Museum of Criminology before joining a crypt tour in the afternoon.

The Crime Museum was really close to my hostel, just across the river (Here is the article in Atlas Obscura). It was only 2euros and I highly recommend a visit. I was the only one there, totally awesome to get away from the tourists.

The museum is housed at the back of an old police station and features reproduction and real items from crimes in Italy. The items are have Italian descriptions, some with a translation into English. It's hard for me to describe all of the items, some are from real crimes and others are about dealing with criminals. Hopefully my photos will help!



Cheap entry!

Apparently, the bones of a real criminal

Replica Iron Maiden. From memory, I don't think anyone has found a real one so they don't even know if they were used as a torture device.

Cute little diorama of Iron Bull torture. This one is great! They put the human inside and lit a fire beneath. The only air intake was through a horn in the mouth and it made a spooky 'moo' sound.

Gossips Bridle

Executioners knife

Death mask of criminal

Executioners robes

Gosh, I wish I could speak Italian! ;)
This room was filled with contraband and ways to hide the contraband.

Forgeries!

Prison tattoo guns

Ways to hide things in prison.

That was the end of the museum! Definitely got a few hours out of it, and value for money for only 2 euros!

Next stop was a crypt tour that I booked online. I took the tour by a company called Dark Rome, and it was the Crypt and Catacomb Tour. Included in the price was transport by bus/coach to three different crypts. Roman Catacombs, Basilica San Clemente, and Capuchin Crypts.
I generally don't like tour groups, they annoy the crap out of me. I was originally going to visit the Capuchin Crypt by myself, but I thought I might take a tour so I could see three different catacombs.
There is a lack of photos because there was no photography allowed in any of the crypts.

The first two catacombs didn't have any visible bones, but it was really interesting to go underground and see so much history. One of the locations has been there since before Romans came, and they kept building on top of it.

The highlight of the tour was the Capuchin Crypt, which I wish I could have taken photos of. Sadly, no photos allowed so please look at the google results and you'll get the idea.

I took a photo of a postcard, sneaky no?

Okay, so the Capuchin Crypt has six rooms that are decorated in human remains and mummified monks. They don't really know who the bones all belong to, the story is that the monks had to move location and they couldn't rebury the bones, so they decorated!
I could have spent hours looking at these rooms! But it was the end of the tour and the museum was closing for the night. I highly recommend this Crypt if you ever visit Rome. It's under 10euro to visit (I think 6euro off the top of my head)

After another big day in Rome I was super tired. Next time, the Vatican!

2013 Trip:
Paris Day 1 [here]
Paris Day 2 [here]
Paris Day 3 [here]

Rome Day 1 [here]
Rome Day 3 [here]
Rome Day 3 [here]

Vienna Day 1 [here]
Vienna Day 2 [here]
Vienna Day 3 [here]

Berlin Day 1 [here]
Berlin Day 2 [here]
Berlin Day 3 [here]

UK [here]

3 comments:

Fiona C. said...

I'm always deeply disturbed by the ingenuity in old torture devices; no one should be that enthusiastically creative about hurting other people.

I've always wanted to go to the capuchin crypt; nice one!

Insomniac's Attic said...

I've been to a few torture museums myself ... they're disturbing and fascinating at the same time! Was the crypt tour as crowded as the Vatican tour? Because when I saw those pictures in your post, I now know that no matter how much I'd love to see it, I could never stand to be in with a group that closely packed together!

Vulcan_Butterfly said...

I would love to see those crypts!