Built in 1816, the Capela dos Ossos was constructed from the bones of more than 1000 monks.

Only sunlight illuminates the chapel’s small, intricate interior. The walls and arched ceiling are brimming with skulls and femurs, held in place by mortar. All the unused bones, such as ribcages, sternums and clavicles, are interred beneath the centre of the chapel. Many of the bones are crumbling or eroded, revealing delicate, webbed interiors - or, in the case of some cracked skulls, vacant indentations.

To say this place is strange is an understatement. The Capela dos Ossos has been crafted in such a way that visitors marvel at its beauty and its ghastliness simultaneously. And yet, despite its captivating quality, it’s easy to feel a strange disconnect from the chapel. Everything is so perfectly, attentively arranged - like brick, stone or some other traditional material - that it takes awhile to really understand the bones and their origins, and to grasp that they were, at one time, the structural framework inside of living, breathing men. It’s an odd but stunning monument, meant to serve as a reminder of the inevitability of death. It does the trick.

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