Catacombe del Convento dei Cappuccini ★★

Creepy crypt and catacombs in Palermo

This is one of the most macabre yet fascinating sights in Italy, a plaster-walled network of high, naturally lit tunnels in whose niches lie or stand the fully dressed, mummified bodies of some 8,000 dead Palermitani. Some were preserved in lime or arsenic, most were simply dried out by the natural controlled climate down here.

The monks began preserving their dead here in 1599, but it soon became fashionable, and sections were created for the wealthy (men and women separate), priests, professors, and children.

The last entombment was in 1920, when two-year-old Rosalia Lombardo was mummified using a secret chemical injection method that has kept her almost perfectly preserved (if a little sallow), so remarkably un-deathlike she's dubbed the "Sleeping Beauty."

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