Tales from the Crypt

No, this is not a post about the HBO series; it just seems to be a very fitting title. You'll soon see why.

This past weekend I was reading my February 2009 issue of National Geographic (yes, I am a little behind in my magazine readings) and ran across a most interesting article. It was about the Catacombe dei Cappuccini (Catacombs of the Capuchins) located in Palermo, a historic city located in Southern Italy. Actually, it is located on the island of Sicily...and it is the home of my ancestors. My great-grandparents left Palermo for Ellis Island in the early 1900's.

I'll have to write about them someday.

But anywho...

After I read the article, I was more than a little creeped out, but even more so I had a morbid curiosity to read more about these catacombs located deep underneath the Capuchin Monastery.

It began back in the late 1500's, when the monastery ran out of space in their cemetery to buy their dead. One, or perhaps several, of the monks had the great idea to start excavating underneath the monastery to build catacombs. The first person to be placed here in 1599 was Silvestro of Gubbio, where he remains yet to this day.



You see, somehow they discovered that these catacombs contained something special about them that would preserve mummified corpses. And instead of closing them up in caskets, they decided to decorate the walls with these mummies. At first they only placed friars and other religious leaders there, but in later years it became en vogue to be buried there.

And so now over 8,000 mummies hang from the walls or lay in slabs throughout the catacombs. Everyone from babies and children to women to men. All in there original clothing, in all phases of human decomposition.

Let me share with you some pictures I snagged from this website. Click there or here to read and see more.











The last person to be mummified and placed here was little 2-year old Rosalia Lombardo back in 1920. She has been nicknamed Sleeping Beauty, as you can see.



Yes, these catacombs are now a tourist attraction. You can walk through the halls and see for yourself 400 years of human remains, and also see the rooms where they prepared the bodies and mummified them.

I am torn. Sicily is one of the places I would love to see, and I am morbidly fascinated with this.

My question to you is, would you go and see it?