Catacombs nasturtiums of Palermo

The catacombs nasturtiums of Palermo are catacombs located at Palermo, in Sicily, and which shelter bodies having been the subject of a momification.

History

The cemetery of the Monastery of the Capuchins starting to lack place, the monks started the construction of a Crypte under this last. In 1599, they momifièrent one their brothers having recently found death, Silvestro de Gubbio, and placed it in the catacombs.

The bodies underwent a process of dehydration, before being washed with the Vinaigre. Some were embaumés, while others were locked up under seal in cabins of glass. The monks was preserved with their clothing of the every day, and sometimes with the cords which they had worn in penitence.

In the beginning, the catacombs had been dug with the only intention of the monks. During following centuries, to profit from a burial in the catacombs nasturtiums became however a mark of social prestige for the sicilian Aristocratie . In their wills, the interested parties asked to be preserved with a certain type of clothing, or even so that their clothes with regular intervals be changed. The priest S wore their church vestments, while others wanted to get dressed with the mode with their time. The close relatives often returned visit to their missings, not only to request but also to maintain the bodies in a presentable aspect.

The catacombs were maintained during centuries thanks to the gifts the families. Each new body was placed in a temporary niche, before being moved in its place of final rest. As long as the gifts continued, the body remained in its place. In the contrary case, the corpse was stored on a rack while waiting for the arrival of new funds.

The last buried monk was the Riccardo brother in 1871, but of other people external with the monastery continued to enter there. The catacombs officially ceased functioning in 1880, although they remain accessible to the tourists and that the last burials actually took place in the Années 1920. One of the all buried last was small the Rosalia Lombardo, then two years old and whose body always intact, is preserved according to a know-how now lost: the professor Alfredo Salafia carried it with him in the tomb.

Tourism

The catacombs contain today approximately 8000 Momie S, laid out along the walls. The galleries are divided into several categories: Men, Women, Virgins, Children, Priests, Monks and Professionals. Certain bodies are preserved better than of others, and some are fixed in a particular installation: thus of two children sitting together on a rocking chair.

The catacombs are opened with the public, but the catch of Photographie S is proscribed there. Iron grids were posed besides to prevent the tourists touching or from being caught in photograph with the bodies. Since the years 1980, the carbonic gas emitted by the breathing of crowd of tourists and the lighting given by the opening of windows in the part high irremediably modified the athmosphère favourable with the conservation of the bodies, which today are very degraded.

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