Chiesa del Purgatorio

Baroque church with skull-and-bone decoration and mummified bodies in the crypt

Officially the Chiesa di Santa Maria del Suffragio, this small Baroque church on Via Garibaldi is known to everyone in Monopoli as the Chiesa del Purgatorio. The facade is plastered with carved skulls, crossed bones, and skeletal figures — a memento mori program meant to remind passers-by of the brevity of life and the importance of praying for the dead.

The real curiosity is inside: a crypt with the natural-mummified bodies of members of the confraternity that built the church in the seventeenth century. The chamber is opened only on certain days (typically All Souls and during the patronal festa); the rest of the year you can see the upper church and a small museum of religious objects. Bring a torch — the lighting is theatrical at best.

things to do sight church
A story
The mummified corpses preserved beneath the altar are members of the Confraternita del Purgatorio, a lay brotherhood whose role was to pray for souls trapped in purgatory. Bodies were dried in a chamber beneath the church and dressed in the brotherhood's robes; about a dozen are still visible behind glass.