I see dead people

I have been making up for lost time. I am forty four years old, never seen a dead body but today I saw eight thousand.
Seems appropriate that underneath a city obsessed with death lies, well, more death. More and more and more death.

Several hundred years ago the Capuchin monks 'dicovered' that their catacombs were not only a good place to bury the dead, but an excellent place to preserve them.
This place is out of the way, if not slightly dodgy to get to taking you though some of the least desirable parts of Palermo.
Nothing really prepares you for what lies beneath. It's all business as usual and then there you are, in one of the many halls, bodies lining the walls pinned up like butterflies.
There are five hundred years of bodies here so it could get confusing. But to make life easy those monks put great deal of thought into death. They categorised the bodies, making it easier to find, say, a professor, a baby girl, a baby boy, a lady, a not-so lady, a family or, my own personal favourite, a virgin.

The bodies are in varying forms of decay. Some have skin intact, others hair (head, nose and ear) and one three hundred year old dude was sporting a mo. Nice.