Italy's Creepiest Museum Is A Historic Spot In Rome That Will Leave You Feeling Unsettled

For those looking for a city with a touch of the macabre, Rome should definitely be on your travel bucket list. The Eternal City is steeped in thousands of years of history, so, of course, there are quite a few ghost stories and unexplained mysteries among the many things you can learn about while visiting some of the interesting sites. Though not always for the faint of heart, one of these sites includes the Museo Delle Anime Del Purgatorio (Museum of the Holy Souls in Purgatory), a tiny museum inside a beautiful church with a fascinating origin story.

Located close to the riverbank, inside the Chiesa del Sacro Cuore del Suffragio in the Prati neighborhood in Rome, is a small, one-room museum with various artifacts showing mysterious handprints on them. The claim is that the hand prints on each item in the museum are from departed souls who are in purgatory, a place in the afterlife where Catholics believe the soul must go to purge its sins before moving on to heaven. People have described the prints as being burn marks left behind by these dead spirits, and they have appeared on items like books (usually religious texts), pieces of clothing, original papers or photographs of documents, wooden tablets, and more that have been collected by the museum.

The Chiesa del Sacro Cuore del Suffragio is a neo-Gothic church that was completed in 1917, but before that, the building was the site of a different chapel that mysteriously burned down in 1897. According to the church's history, one of the priests, a French-born missionary named Victor Jouet, claimed that he and other onlookers saw a face with a pained expression imprinted in the flame as well as the ashes of the fire. The priest took this experience as evidence that the face belonged to a soul trapped in purgatory. After the fire, Jouet started to collect other items from all over Europe that contained these imprints, which are now on display (all behind glass casings to protect the items from further damage). There is no evidence to show that these items were, in fact, touched by lost souls in purgatory, but the story is still fascinating (and perhaps a little unnerving) to those who enjoy a good mystery.

Of course, there are many must-see churches in Rome, so it's easy to miss the Chiesa del Sacro Cuore del Suffragio since it is smaller and a little newer than some of the other religious sites in the city. On its own, the neo-Gothic style has earned the church the moniker "the little Milan cathedral" since it bears resemblance to the Duomo in Milan. There is no specific website for the church or the museum, so it's important to plan ahead by contacting the church directly for visiting hours and be sure to dress modestly, covering shoulders and knees, when you enter as a sign of respect.

If you are looking for similar spooky experiences in Rome, you can walk east or take the metro to the famous Capuchin Crypt located below the Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, where there are a succession of rooms with elaborate displays of actual bones of deceased Capuchin monks. There are also lots of haunted history and ghost tours that will take you all around the city, so you're bound to run into many opportunities to explore its spooky side no matter where you go. History lovers, in particular, would enjoy a tour of the Catacombs of Santa Domitilla, an old underground cemetery and church that dates all the way back to the Roman Empire.

Prati is a beautiful neighborhood that is a little further away from the usual tourist traps. There are plenty of intimate bars, restaurants, and lots of shopping, so you're bound to run into a nice local coffee shop or cafe after your visit. There are also several other major tourist sites in and around Prati, including the Castel Sant'Angelo, a medieval fortress that's a popular destination for history buffs, as well as Vatican City if you walk about half an hour west of the museum. According to Visit Rome, there are also over 900 churches in the city, so you could spend weeks visiting every one of them. And while all of them are unique in their own way, few rival the eerieness you can find at the Museum of the Holy Souls in Purgatory.