San Bernardino alle Ossa

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One of Milan's most bizarre attractions, the San Bernardino alle Ossa's ossuary chapel manages to create a freakish sort of beauty from a bone-chilling template. The chapel (marked 'ossario') to the right as you enter is decorated in delightfully disturbing fashion, with symbols and patterns picked out in human bones supplied by the nearby Ospedale del Brolo - and the occasional skull, supplied by decapitated criminals. Other, more colourful theories suggest that these are the bones of the illegitimate children of Milanese noblewomen, or martyrs from Arian massacres. The interior gloom is enlivened by the bright colours of the vault painting by Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734), Triumph of the Soul Among the Angels. The chapel itself was built in 1695 on the site of a structure dating from 1210.