Crypts and Legends, from Piazza Barberini to Via Giulia

The walk starts with the bones and works its way west across the centre, ending at a church almost nobody goes into. First the Capuchin Crypt, where the remains of close to 4,000 people, most of them friars of the order, were arranged into the decoration of five small chapels. It was not done for effect. The Capuchins were making an argument about mortality, and they made it with the only material they were certain of. After that the route crosses the tourist city and tells it differently. The Trevi Fountain and the legends attached to the water. The Pantheon from outside, and the succession of uses that kept it standing while everything around it fell down. Piazza Navona, and the ghosts the palaces on the square are supposed to still hold. Campo de' Fiori, where Giordano Bruno was burned in 1600 and where his statue now stands facing the direction that mattered to whoever paid for it. It finishes on Via Giulia at Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte, the church of the confraternity that collected unclaimed bodies from the streets and the river. Its facade carries winged skulls, and most people walk past without looking up.