the Capuchin convent in Palermo

One of the most suggestive places to visit going to Palermo is the Capuchin convent. The Convent is known throughout the world for the presence in its basement of a vast cemetery, which attracts the curiosity of many tourists. The macabre spectacle of the innumerable exposed corpses is an occasion for reflection on the transience of life, on earthly vanities and on the uselessness of men's attachment to their exterior features. The galleries were excavated at the end of the 16th century in Gothic style with cross-vaulted ogival ribbed vaults and ogival vaults; these form a large rectangular cemetery. The bodies present there have never been inventoried, but it has been calculated that they must reach the figure of about 8,000.

The mummies, standing or lying down, fully dressed, are divided by gender and social category, even though most of them belong to the upper classes, since the embalming process was expensive. In the various sectors we recognize: prelates; merchants and bourgeois in their "Sunday" clothes; army officers in a gala uniform; young virgin women, dead before being married, dressed in their wedding dress; family groups standing on high shelves, bounded by thin railings similar to balconies; children; etc.