So we went to see those crazy ol’ Capuchins. We saw some in Rome but didn’t blog about it because they don’t let you take photos. The Capuchin Monks (an offshoot of the Franciscans) have these crypts with human skeletons. The crypt in Rome took about 15 minutes to visit and was weird and kind of morbidly cool. The monks had sorted all the different types of bones and turned them into ‘art’ (as you do).
The Palermo version however… hmmm. Not so cool. In Rome, it was "ah, those crazy Capuchins." In Palermo it was "ew, those crazy Capuchins." You weren't supposed to take photos in the Palermo one either, but because the complex was so big, Trevor managed to sneak a few photos in.
They had full skeletons, still in their clothes, rotting away. On some there was still hair, beards, fingernails while some had jaws that had broken off (literally jaw-dropping) and others with their heads hanging on by a wire. There was hundreds and hundreds of metres of this shit. The catacombs contain about 8000 corpses and 1252 mummies that line the walls. The halls are divided into categories: Men, Women, Virgins, Children, Priests, Monks, and Professionals.
I was starting to get a little freaked out when Trevor said “it would be really bad if they had an earthquake right now and these skeletons fell on top of us”. So at that moment I said, “perhaps we should leave.”. Another 10 minutes or so to get out, pretty happy to be on the outside.
