In 1599, Capuchin monks discovered that their catacombs contained a mysterious preservative that helped mummify the dead. As a result, more than 8,000 Sicilians from all walks of life chose to be buried here.
The corpses range in date from the late 1500s to 1920 and most were embalmed before their display. Giuseppe Tommasi, prince of Lampedusa and author of the famous Sicilian work The Leopard, was buried in the cemetery next to the catacombs in 1957.
The corpses range in date from the late 1500s to 1920 and most were embalmed before their display. Giuseppe Tommasi, prince of Lampedusa and author of the famous Sicilian work The Leopard, was buried in the cemetery next to the catacombs in 1957.
Location: Palermo, Italy
Status: Museum
Status: Museum
What to See
Visitors can wander through the catacombs' dank corridors among the mummified bodies. The halls are divided into categories that include: Men, Women, Virgins, Children, Priests, Monks, and Professors (including the famous painter Velasquez).
The corpses are dressed in splendid clothes, now somewhat decayed, and occupy their own individual niches according to their social status. Many of the deceased wrote wills that specified the clothes in which to bury them, and some even asked to have their clothes changed over a period of time.
Many corpses are still remarkably preserved and some give the impression of enjoying a joke with their deceased friends. Others are not in such good shape, with horribly contorted, creepy faces and missing parts like jaws and hands.
The last corpse to be buried here was that of 2-year-old Rosalia Lombaro, who died in 1920. She is so well-preserved, she has been nicknamed "Sleeping Beauty."
Visitors can wander through the catacombs' dank corridors among the mummified bodies. The halls are divided into categories that include: Men, Women, Virgins, Children, Priests, Monks, and Professors (including the famous painter Velasquez).
The corpses are dressed in splendid clothes, now somewhat decayed, and occupy their own individual niches according to their social status. Many of the deceased wrote wills that specified the clothes in which to bury them, and some even asked to have their clothes changed over a period of time.
Many corpses are still remarkably preserved and some give the impression of enjoying a joke with their deceased friends. Others are not in such good shape, with horribly contorted, creepy faces and missing parts like jaws and hands.
The last corpse to be buried here was that of 2-year-old Rosalia Lombaro, who died in 1920. She is so well-preserved, she has been nicknamed "Sleeping Beauty."
The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily, by Ruby
In 1599, local priests of Palermo, Sicily, mummified one of their recently deceased brothers, a holy monk named Silvestro of Gubbio, and interred him inside the catacombs so that they could continue to pray for him following his death. This was the beginning of what was to become a most macabre museum.
Priests
Subsequently, the catacombs became filled with dead friars. But this was to set a trend whereby the local people wanted their own relatives mummified. Such was the desire for this unorthodox practice, that wills were written to include a choice of attire; some expressing a wish to have a change of clothing after a given period.
It wasn't long before there were hundreds of mummies contained in the catacombs. Today, eight thousand mummified corpses line the walls like a 3D catalogue of death.
The catacombs are vast and the corpses are displayed in a variety of ways. Some are in closed coffins, some of which have had a side panel removed in which to view the body. But most are coffinless and are displayed on full view to the public. The relatives would pay donations for the upkeep of the catacombs, and whilst payments were received their loved ones corpse was given its own position, where many were posed in a lifelike fashion. However, once donations stopped, the corpse would be relegated to eternity on a shelf!
Mummy shelves
Although most are so old that little remains but a dressed skeleton. Some still have skin and hair, and in a few cases they still have their eyes!
Time and gravity has taken its toll, distorting a lot of the corpses, creating a gruesome image where the mummies appear to be screaming in an eternal agony.
Red haired boy
Perhaps the saddest sight is that of the babies and children. A few of which hardly seem to have altered since death; their beauty and innocence suspended in time, creating an image not unlike a long forgotten doll, abandoned in a musty attic.
Children
The most famed of the children is Rosalia Lombardo. Nicknamed the Sleeping Beauty, she almost appears at sleep in her open coffin, and looks as perfect as any sleeping child. She died of pneumonia in 1920 aged 2, and was embalmed by a secret method invented by Dr Solafia of Palermo. It is now known that the method consisted of using formalin to kill bacteria, alcohol to dry the body, glycerin to stop the body from becoming over dry, salicylic acid to kill fungi, and zinc salts to give the body rigidity. Rosalia's family are said to have visited her body often.
Rosalia Lombardo
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