October might be the month of choice for spooky digs, but if you’re up for a site combining history and beauty with a few thousand spine-tingling details, add Chapel of the Bones (Capela dos Ossos) to your travel list. Located in Evora, southeast of Lisbon in Portugal’s Alentejo region, Chapel of the Bones is a tiny, ornate, 16^th-century chapel holding more than 5,000 skulls and bones once belonging to monks.

The chapel itself is contained within the larger Church of São Francisco, a structure commissioned by two Portuguese kings: Dom João II and Dom Manuel I. Architectural details of

the church include a single nave and a ribbed, vaulted ceiling. Altogether, there are 12 chapels within. Decorations include a late Renaissance doorway with decorative features that change depending upon the point of view from which they’re viewed, as well as carved woodwork and azulejo tiles.

© Visit Alentejo

The bone details are embedded in the walls and ceiling of the chapel, and can also be seen in the stone columns. Two complete skeletons are also displayed. While recognized as the largest of this type of chapel, Evora’s Chapel of the Bones is actually one of six in the Algarve and Alentejo regions.

Others are located close by, including the Baroque-style Capela dos Ossos, located at Parish Church of Campo Maior. This church was constructed in 1776 following a devastating explosion in the powder magazine of the castle, killing more than two-thirds of the local population. The bones in this chapel belonged to the victims of the explosion.

Also close by is Capela dos Ossos de Monforte, the smallest bone chapel in Portugal and attached to the 18^th-century Igreja Matriz de Monforte. Skulls are the theme here, including one displayed prominently above the chapel’s access door.