There was a trend in the 19th century of building crypts on medium to large size family estates, usually subtly placed on the edge of the grounds or more commonly incorporated into the cellar. In some localities, an above ground crypt is more commonly called a mausoleum, which also refers to any elaborate building intended as a burial place, for any number of people. Many royal families, for example, have vast crypts containing the bodies of dozens of former royalty. Wealthy or prestigious families will often have a 'family crypt' or 'vault,' in which all members of the family are interred. Crypts are usually found in cemeteries and under public religious buildings, such as churches or cathedrals, but are also occasionally found beneath mausolea or chapels on personal estates. Placing a corpse into a crypt can be called immurement, and is a method of final disposition, as an alternative to, for example, cremation.

In more modern terms, a crypt is most often a stone chambered burial vault used to store the deceased. By the Gothic period crypts were rarely built, however burial vaults continued to be constructed beneath churches and referred to as crypts. Examples from this period are most common in the early medieval West, for example in Burgundy at Dijon and Tournus.Īfter the 10th century, the early medieval requirements of a crypt faded, as church officials permitted relics to be held in the main level of the church. Their popularity then spread more widely in western Europe under Charlemagne. These are the only remains of the Visigothic cathedral of Palencia.Ĭrypts were introduced into Frankish church building in the mid-8th century, as a feature of its Romanization. The Visigothic crypt (the Crypt of San Antolín) in Palencia Cathedral (Spain), was built during the reign of Wamba to preserve the remains of the martyr Saint Antoninus of Pamiers, a Visigothic-Gallic nobleman brought from Narbonne to Visigothic Hispania in 672 or 673 by Wamba himself. The tomb was made accessible through an underground passageway beneath the sanctuary from where pilgrims could enter at one stair, pass by the tomb and exit without interrupting the clerical community's service at the altar directly above. Peter's Basilica, Rome, developed about the year 600, as a means of affording pilgrims a view of Saint Peter's tomb, which lay according to the Roman fashion, directly below the high altar. The 17th century crypt found in 1911 in the city of Pori, Finland.įirst known in the early Christian period, in particular North Africa at Chlef and Djemila in Algeria, and Byzantium at Saint John Studio in Constantinople where Christian churches have been built over mithraea, the mithraeum has often been adapted to serve as a crypt.

Crypt of the ancients