Catacombe dei Cappuccini

Today we walked 40 minutes across Palermo to get to the Catacombe dei Cappuccini. I already knew the catacombs, but found them so fascinating last time, that I wanted to look at them again.

So the Catacombe dei Cappuccini are burial catacombs in Palermo. Today they provide a somewhat macabre tourist attraction as well as an extraordinary historical record.

But how did that happen? Palermo's Capuchin monastery outgrew its original cemetery in the 16th century and monks began to excavate crypts below it. In 1599 they mummified one of their number, the recently-deceased brother Silvestro of Gubbio, and placed him in the catacombs.

Bodies were dehydrated on racks of ceramic pipes in the catacombs and sometimes later washed with vinegar. Some bodies were embalmed and others were enclosed in sealed glass cabinets. Friars were preserved with their everyday clothing and sometimes with ropes they had worn in penance.

Initially the catacombs were intended only for deceased friars. However, in later centuries it became a status symbol to be entombed in the Capuchin catacombs. In their wills, local luminaries would ask to be preserved in certain clothes, or even have their clothes changed at regular intervals. Priests wore their clerical vestments, while others were clothed according to contemporary fashion. Relatives would visit to pray for the deceased and to maintain the body in presentable condition.

The catacombs were maintained through donations from the relatives of the deceased. Each new body was placed in a temporary niche and later placed into a more permanent location. So long as contributions continued, the body remained in its proper place but if relatives stopped sending money, the body was put aside on a shelf until they resumed payments.

The bodies present have never been counted, but it is believed that there were up to 8,000. The mummies, standing or lying down, dressed in elegant clothes, are divided by sex and social class. Most belong to the higher classes, as mummification was an expensive procedure. In the various branches one can recognize prelates, merchants and bourgeois in Sunday clothes, army officers in parade uniform, young virgin women, who disappeared before they could get married, wearing their wedding dress, family groups standing on high shelves , separated by thin balcony-like railings, and children.

What a strange place 🤪.Read more