The Capuchin Crypts are Rome's scariest sight

It’s true that Rome has made a name for itself as a romantic spot – somewhere to wander, eat, drink and be merry – but you can’t judge a book by its cover. The Eternal City has a dark side you won’t see in most holiday photos and what better time of year than Halloween to explore it? The following are our favourite spooky Halloween activities to get you in the mood for the scariest day of the year.

The Capuchin Crypts

What could be scarier than the cenuturies-old corpse of a monk? How about 4,000 ancient monk corpses. The Capuchin Crypts in Rome are a strange and eerie sight. Here the monks of the Capuchin order honoured their dead colleagues by using their skeletons to decorate an underground crypt that goes on for kilometres. The skulls are arranged in various ways throughout the halls and rooms, forming doorways, huge sweeping motifs, designs such as skull/pelvic bone butterflies and even being used in practical devices such as lanterns. Perhaps the creepiest use of dead Roman friars is in the grim reaper who stares down from one of the ceilings, his scales and scythe made of bones. You’ll be seeing it for weeks after.

Dark Rome operates the only tour of the Rome Catacombs, providing a guide to ensure that you squeeze every last terrifying drop out of the experience. And guess what? We have a tour running on Halloween and there’s still space! For more information see here.

Fingerprint burns on a bible in Little Purgatory Museum

Sure the Capitoline Museums are spectacular and sure you could spend all day in the MAXXI Museum for Contemprorary Art, but if you’re looking for something a little different – something a little spooky perhaps – the Little Purgatory Museum, or Piccolo Museo del Purgatorio should be top, bottom and centre of your list. Its subject matter is purgatory, the place souls go to between death and the afterlife, said to be a particularly hot and firey spot. The tiny museum has only a few displays but considering how selective the curators are, that’s hardly surprising. The artefacts here are said to have provided a bridge between purgatory and this world. There’s an apron with an ashy smudge from a tiny hand, a tabletop with a cross and fingermarks burned into it, and the sleeve of a nightshirt that a dead friar is said to have reached out and grabbed from the fires of purgatory, burning his print into the garment.

Whether you believe the stories or not, the Little Purgatory Museum is a great Rome Halloween activity.

Dark Heart of Rome tour

For many people, the best part of Halloween is the storytelling aspect. Sitting around in the dark with only a torch or lantern to light the speaker as they spin a tale full of horror and suspense. The good news is that you don’t have to be in Uncle Jim’s to get that experience. The better news is that the stories in Rome are true.

No need to go to Uncle Jim's this year

I’m talking about our original Rome tour, the one that gave us our name. The Dark Heart of Rome tour sees our most charismatic guides take visitors on a journey through the backstreets of Rome. As you walk they tell tales of executors who lived for their work, heretics burned at the stake and the mysterious happenings that have made Italians so superstitious. Stories gain a chilling context when you’re standing in the place where they happened – outside the house of the executor perhaps, or on the exact spot where an innocent was burned to death.

While we the Legends and Mysteries Dark Heart of Rome tour will not be running on Halloween, we do have a tour scheduled for the night before, October 30th to make sure you are suitably shivery on the big night. For more information see here.

The Scavi, St. Peter’s Basilica

I won’t go into too much detail here because our last post was on the Scavi and also, because you won’t get access at this late time, but needless to say if you have managed to bag a tour for the crypts under St. Peter’s Basilica in the day’s before or after Halloween, you’re in for a treat. With spooky artefacts that possibly include the remains of an apostle, the Scavi is a pretty special Halloween visit.

Museo Criminologico

More trick than treat at Museo Criminologico

This is one to put manners on the kids. The Museo Criminologico di Roma or Rome Museum of Criminals is a gruesome spot that chronicles the history of the prison system in Italy with dispays that include instruments of torture, weapons and even execution. And just to drive the point home, there’s a cage containing the remains of a prisoner from Sicily. They’ll be on their best behaviour for weeks after that one.

Eerie Rome sights aren’t confined to catacombs and museums though. All across the city you can find traces of the bizarre and disturbing, from the bodies of saints, popes and apostles displayed in so many churches, to the Colosseum where gladiators once fought to the death or the remains of Nero’s palace where he reportedly burned Christians as night lights. With such a long and brutal history there’s no disputing that Rome is a fantastic Halloween destination – you just have to know where to look.