This is one of the world’s most macabre places, with hundreds of fully dressed, carefully preserved corpses, with skin and hair still intact. Meet the former rich and famous of Palermo in the Capuchin Catacombs. Not for the faint-hearted!

Don’t be put off by the distance between the city centre and the catacombs; the detour is worth every extra penny or moment you spend to get there.

What makes these catacombs different from any others is that the 2,000 corpses on display haven’t been reduced to mere skeletons, but have been carefully prepared by mummification, which means that flesh and hair are astonishingly well preserved, especially considering that some of the corpses are up to 200 years old. Add in the clothes which were carefully chosen either in advance by the deceased or afterwards by relatives and you have an extraordinary and fascinating collection of dead but seemingly alive characters. Wander at your leisure down five galleries of “niches”,  each one containing a different personality. The mummification practiced on the corpses is a bit of an historic accident: the nearby Santa Maria della Pace church,  which dates back to 1534, had a habit of burying its friars at the back of an altar, but when they ran out of room, they decided to exhume a certain number of old ones to make room for the new. Much to their astonishment they found almost 40 Friars had been preserved in an almost impeccable state.

The Capuchins believed that this was an act of God and decided to display and adore  the bodies of their brothers as relics, propped in niches along the walls of the first corridor of the new cemetery. From then onwards the Capuchins began accepting lay people and it became a tradition and a status symbol for the rich and famous in Palermo to be mummified and exhibited in niches in the Catacombs.

Don’t miss:

The body of Fra Silvestro da Gubbio, exposed in a simple brown robe and headdress clutching a sign commemorating the event (16 Ottobre 1599). He was the  first to be housed in the newly-created catacomb.

The body of Antonio Prestigiacomo. Note how well he is preserved. He was mummified using an arsenic bath: a method of mummification used during periods of epidemic.

The body of Rosalia Lombardo, a two year old child who died in 1920, sometimes considered to be the "world's most beautiful mummy". She was embalmed rather than mummified. Note her serene face, her golden curls and her soft and relaxed skin which make her look as though she’s still alive.

Address

Piazza Cappuccini, 1, 90129 Palermo