Cemetery of the Mummies

The Church of the Dead in Urbania, formerly known as the Cola Chapel until 1836, houses a silent crypt where the bodies of ordinary mortals have rested for over four centuries. This church, adorned with a splendid Gothic portal, is famous as the Cemetery of the Mummies, known for the curious phenomenon of natural mummification: a particular mold that dried the corpses, preserving them in a surprising way.
In 1833, 18 already mummified bodies, extracted from nearby tombs, were displayed behind the altar, following the Napoleonic edict of Saint Cloud in 1804 which established extra-urban cemeteries. The Confraternity of the Good Death, founded in Casteldurante in 1567, under the protection of St. John the Beheaded, took care of the arrangement of the bodies (inside the church you can see a representation of the Saint, the work of Giustino Episcopi).

The Confraternity was responsible for the free transportation and burial of the dead, especially the indigent, for the assistance of the dying, for the registration of the deceased in a special book and for the distribution of alms to the poor. During the funeral ceremony the “Brothers” wore a white robe with a black hood on their heads (as seen inside the church in the central figure, Prior Vincenzo Piccini, creator of the necropolis). Each of the mummies of Urbania has a unique story to tell. Among them, a young woman who died by caesarean section, a young man stabbed during a dance party, and a mummy of a man who, it is said, was buried alive in a state of apparent death. Let the custodian guide you to discover the hidden stories of these fascinating characters.