exploring & escapades

This eerie chapel appears so innocent from the outside where it sits not far from the harbor in Faro. But through the doors and behind the altar, out the back door lies an entirely different sort of little sanctuary. A room of human skulls, perfectly and aesthetically arranged. The entire structure, in fact, is built of human bones, the remains of over 1,200 monks, who were exhumed from the cemetery that formerly sat on the site of the chapel.

These sorts of places generate such mixed feelings for me; awe, sadness. It’s so strange to stare into the empty sockets of a human skull and to think that one time, not too long ago in the timeline of the universe, there would have been two eyes staring back at me. Eyes of a person with hopes, dreams, and feelings… now gone.