Santa Maria della concezione

Before I decide which small church I want to visit, I was not sure which one I should go. I did not really know any of the small churches I was supposed to visit. So I thought I would just go anywhere my friends want to go. However, the day before I was going to go to one of the small churches, I talked to Guerry and told me that there is a big surprise in Santa Maria della Concezione. She was strongly recommending me to go to Santa Maria della Concezione and she said that I wouldn’t be disappointed by the surprise.
I really did not know anything about the church. I thought the big surprise would be something like a beautiful art piece because that is what I have been seeing at churches. I was expecting Fresco with gold or diamonds. However, my imagination totally crashed when I saw what’s in the underground of the church.
When Sandy, Allan and me went to the church, we decided to go to the underground first. We lined up and we happily donated money for our big surprise. As soon as I got I could say was “oh my god.” Instead of being in church, a place where I should feel safe and calm, I thought I just entered a hell.
The rooms in the underground were decorated with human bones. Also, there were piles of human bones and skulls. These were not just random piles. Someone organized the bones in certain ways. One of the walls was covered by at least a hundred of hip bones. It was just outrageous. I felt that this is disgusting. I am not sure if the bones were donated to decorate the church or to show their worship to the god, I just couldn’t understand why would someone ever want to decorate a church with human bones. Are they some kind of scarifications? There ware really so many bones in the church. I think the bones belong to at least a thousand of people who are dead now.
After we looked around this horrifying room, we went up to see the inside of the church. The church looked really old. I don’t think the church is preserved as well as other famous churches. However, the church was not that different from the churches that I have visited in Rome so far. The ceiling art was very impressive and it had the small chapels on the sides.
The ceiling painting on the first chapel to the right from the entrance reminded me of what I saw at the underground of this church. There are a lot of faces in circles on the painting. That made me thinks about the piles of bones. Also, I thought that these might be the faces of owners’ of those bones.
At the last room there was a phrase that really crept me out. It was “What you are now we used to be; what we are now you will be.” It really made me scary and I don’t think I will never be able to forget the moment of reading this phrase while I was surrounded by bones.