Palermo's Creepy Catacombs

My other favorite catacomb is also a Capuchin creation - in Rome. I sought it out in my college years while backpacking thru Europe. Thousands upon thousands of human bones are lovingly shaped into chandeliers, wall designs and murals.

Those capuchin monks rock! I was once told I was a monk in one of my past lives -- lived a life of reflective solitude. Maybe that's why I'm slightly obsessed with monks and nuns.

Speaking of which, I must do a blog in the near future on Padre Pio - who is my all time favorite Franciscan capuchin mystic and monk who was a remarkable psychic and marked with the stigmata...

I'm not using a zoom lens to get in this man's face. I was so close to him I could blow on his mustache. You really do need to click on the photo to see him close up. He's got a fabulous face - oblong like a dinner table - and teeth that remind me of a winding staircase.



This is the drying room. Dehydration was a popular means of mummification. You were laid out to dry before you were laid out to be displayed.



Ah....The Patriarch!...The Father of Crypt! The MacDaddy of the Macabre! If you click on this photo you can see the date - 1599. He was a brother monk who died and then was hung in a well (go figure), which aided in his perfect preservation. He mummified and fellow brothers wanted to keep him around to pray to him.

And for the wealthy, the holy and the prominent - death displayed became en vogue.



More than 8,000 are privileged to be here. And they want you to stare.