Following this discovery, the monks decided to mummify one of their own deceased, and the Palermo townspeople soon joined in.
Today more than eight thousand mummified bodies line the walls of the Catacombe dei Cappuccini in Palermo in one of the most macabre human “libraries” in the world.
The halls of the catacombs are divided into categories: Men, Women, Virgins, Children, Priests (c.f. 2nd picture below), Monks (c.f. 3rd picture below), and Professors (incl. the corpse of the famous painter Velasquez).
The corpses are dressed in fine fabrics and occupy their own individual niches according to their social status.
Some of the deceased wrote wills, expressing the clothes in which to bury them in.
Some even asked to have their clothes changed over a period of time.
In the 1880s the Sicilian authorities banned the practice of mummification.
However, this didn’t stop the custom of visiting Uncle Luigi on Sunday to see whether he was holding together.
If he fell apart, he was freshly wired together.
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