In 1145, the Milanese Goffredo da Bussero had built Santo Stefano Hospital and, not too far away, a cemetery meant to collect the skeletons of the patients who didn’t make it. One hundred years later, the cemetery began to be overcrowded with dead bodies and, therefore, another room was built next to the church to collect them. This room is visitable also today and it keeps all its lugubrious appeal:  you enter from a narrow and poorly lit corridor that ends in the ossuary whose walls are fully covered with skulls and bones as if they were adornments. When you’ll have stopped shivering, gaze up and admire the amazing fresco, dating back to the years 1693-1694 and signed by Sebastiano Ricci. We leave you with a curious fact: in 1783, Juan V, king of Portugal, was so astonished by the beauty of this ossuary-chapel, that he wanted an identical copy in Evora, next to Lisbon.

Additional information:

Via Verziere, 2, Milano, MI, Italia
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