Catacombe dei Cappuccini

Interesting facts

Brother Silvestro of Gubbio, the first friar laid here on 16 October 1599, still lies first on the left after the entrance.

In 2009 researchers identified Salafia's embalming formula: formalin, alcohol, glycerin, salicylic acid and zinc salts, the last giving the body its rigidity.

Rosalia Lombardo died of pneumonia in December 1920, a week before her second birthday; her case is kept at a constant 20°C and 65% humidity.

During epidemics the usual drying was replaced by other methods, with bodies preserved by bathing them in arsenic or in lime water.

Under the standard method, bodies were drained for about a year, washed with vinegar, stuffed with straw and then dressed.

Unmarried young women were laid out in wedding dresses, and military officers were displayed in full dress uniform.

Friars were preserved in their everyday habits, some still wearing the ropes they had used for penance.

The last friar to be interred was Brother Riccardo in 1871, and the final lay burials took place in the late 1930s.

Hygiene laws of the mid-nineteenth century banned burials in crypts, which led to the creation of the Capuchin cemetery next door.

The largest funerary monument in the catacombs belongs to Giuseppe Grimau, who died in 1755.

Why it is worth it

Beneath the Capuchin friary in Palermo lies one of Europe's most unsettling burial places: corridors lined with the dressed, dried and upright bodies of Palermitans who died between the late sixteenth and early twentieth centuries. The friars began digging crypts here at the end of the 1500s, when their cemetery had filled up, and in 1599 they preserved one of their own, Brother Silvestro of Gubbio, and laid him below ground. The method was simple: bodies were left to dry out on racks of terracotta pipes, then sometimes rinsed with vinegar, dressed and set in niches or glass-fronted cases. At first only friars were buried this way, but being preserved among the Capuchins soon became a mark of standing for the city's families.

The effect today is of a vast, silent gathering. The halls are sorted by category, with separate corridors for friars, priests, professionals, men, women, virgins and children, and the clothes span three centuries of fashion, from clerical vestments to the everyday dress of each generation. A census in 2011 counted about 1,250 mummified bodies among roughly 8,000 dead. Relatives once visited regularly, prayed with the deceased and paid for their upkeep; when payments lapsed, a body could be moved off its niche to a shelf. The catacombs were officially closed to new burials in 1880, but exceptions continued into the twentieth century. The most famous is Rosalia Lombardo, a girl of nearly two who was embalmed by Alfredo Salafia with a chemical mixture that has kept her face strikingly intact; she now lies in a sealed glass case filled with nitrogen.

Since 2007 the Sicily Mummy Project has studied the bodies with X-rays and CT scans, recovering information about age, sex, health and the preservation methods used, with recent work focused on identifying the children. Visitors should know what they are walking into: this is the burial ground of a working friary, the displays are open and close at hand behind grilles, and photography is not permitted. The catacombs have drawn curious travellers to the Sicilian capital for centuries, and writers from Alexandre Dumas to Guy de Maupassant came to see them.

Getting there

The catacombs are at the Capuchin convent, about 2.2 km from the centre of Palermo, approached along Via Pindemonte towards the church of Santa Maria della Pace. Falcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO) is 22.9 km away.

Catacombe dei Cappuccini

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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