Mummy girl with open eyes. Rosalia Lombardo. "Sleeping Beauty" opens her eyes The girl's mummy opens and closes

More than 100 years have passed, but little Rosalia has hardly changed in appearance. Every year, the chapel is visited by thousands of curious tourists from all over the world to look at this small body.

Rosalia Lombardo was born a weak and fragile child and died of pneumonia when she was almost two years old. It happened in the month of December 1920 in the city of Palermo, Italy. Rosalia's father was very upset about her death, so he turned to the famous embalmer Alfredo Salafia. He asked to keep his daughter's body from decay. And he agreed. He replaced her blood with a liquid composition of formalin, which disinfected and did not allow cadaveric bacteria to develop on her body, alcohol, which promotes rapid drying of tissues, glycerin, which protects the mummy from complete dehydration, antifungal salicylic acid and zinc salts, which gave the body hardness. The dead girl looked as if she were alive, only slightly snoozed from fatigue in her beautiful dress.

The excellent technique of embalming Salafia kept Rosalia's mummy in good condition until the 21st century. When the first signs of decomposition began to show in early 2000, the coffin with Rosalia Lombardo's body was placed in a glass container filled with nitrogen. Today it stands on a marble pedestal in the farthest part of the Capuchin Catacombs, in the middle of the chapel of Saint Rosalia. The mummy was popularly nicknamed "Sleeping Beauty" because until Rosalia's skin lost its natural color, the child seemed not dead, but sleeping.

At the end of the 20th century, rumors began to circulate that the girl's mummy could be replaced with an ordinary wax copy. To refute this, the researchers brought X-ray equipment to the catacombs and enlightened the coffin with Rosalia's body. It was real. X-rays revealed not only the skeleton, but also the internal organs of the girl, which turned out to be intact. The brain was visible, only its volume was reduced by 50% due to mummification.

More than 100 years have passed, but little Rosalia has hardly changed in appearance. Every year, the chapel is visited by thousands of curious tourists from all over the world to look at this small body. Rosalia Lombardo is one of the main attractions of the Capuchin catacombs located under the Monastery in Palermo. She was the last body to be buried here. In general, about 8,000 people are buried in the catacombs, including the one buried by US Vice-Consul Giovanni Paterniti. The official closure of the Catacombs for burials took place in 1881.

It is worth noting that a couple of years ago, information appeared in the media that Rosalia's eyes began to open. Her left eye opened almost 5 mm. The right one is only 2 mm. The world was able to find out what color the eyes of the "Sleeping Beauty" were - sky blue. The mystics, of course, immediately stated that the spirit of the deceased girl had finally found its body. However, such an unusual phenomenon can be fully explained from a scientific point of view. Rosalia Lombardo's eyes were never tightly closed. And they opened slightly due to a change in the temperature in the room. In addition, at different times of the day, the light falls on the baby's face at certain angles. Therefore, the illusion of opening and closing eyes is created from the side.

The imperishable mummy of a two-year-old girl who died in the Sicilian city of Palermo in the 20th year of the last century is rightfully considered one of the most beautiful mummies in the world, it is also called the sleeping beauty from Palermo. Rosalia Lombardo is absolutely untouched by decay and looks as if she had just died, and not almost a century ago, some people who have seen her even doubt whether they have replaced her with a doll. Of all the Sicilian mummies, she is the most perfect.

Photos of Rosalia during her lifetime, as well as her other facts, have not been found, there is a version that her father is General Lombardo. It is only known for certain that the child did not live up to his second birthday for a week, having died of pneumonia, and the grief-stricken daddy of the crumb turned to the well-known embalming master Alfredo Salafia, who was famous not only in Sicily, but also far beyond its borders, who created this masterpiece.

Salafia was a true master of his craft, starting his experiments on embalming on animals, he managed to invent a formula for an embalming substance, with which he even made his own brother's mummy. He traveled to the United States with his experiments and gained worldwide fame. In Italy, he was trusted to embalm the bodies of prominent political and religious leaders. The American consul's mummy is also the work of his hands.

The secret of his success was in the formula of a substance that replaced the blood of the deceased, all internal organs remained in place and were also embalmed. This substance was sold, but its composition was lost with the death of the author. Already today, scientists - researchers have found relatives of Alfredo Salafia, fortunately, they have preserved his personal records, which indicated the composition of the miracle cure.

• formalin - destroys microorganisms and detoxifies,
• alcohol - dries up,
• glycerin - does not allow you to lose too much moisture,
• zinc salts - make the body of the deceased hard.

In the case of Rosalia Lombardo, Salafia did not limit himself to preparing the body, he paid special attention to the coffin, which is made of wood, the walls inside are sheathed with lead foil, and the girl's head rests on a wooden pillow. The top of the coffin is closed with double glass and sealed with wax. In this form, the body of the baby was exhibited in the chapel of St. Rosalia, the patroness of Palermo. The burial of this girl is one of the last in the Capuchin catacombs.

Secrets of the mummy.

As with everyone else, there are several strange stories associated with Rosalia Lombardo's mummy.

In two thousand and nine, traces of decomposition still appeared, so the coffin with the child was placed in a capsule with nitrogen. Rosalia herself at this time would have been ninety years old.

Rosalia Lombardo died on the eve of her second birthday, having lived on earth for a very short time. Her fame is sad - the girl died of pneumonia in 1920. The family, who was very hard about the loss of a child, turned to the embalmer Alfredo Salafia, who treated the body with a special compound. The child's mummy was left in Palermo, in the almost two-year-old Rosalia Lombardo is in the chapel of the same name. The exhibit, lying in a small coffin with a glass lid, is open to tourists and is the last point on the route through the catacombs.

Rosalia Lombardo: during life - a child, after death - a sign from above

Some believe that the main secret to preserving the body is the secret chemical composition used by the embalmer. Others consider it a miracle. One way or another, one of the most amazing objects in the burial catacombs of the Capuchins is Rosalia Lombardo. "Sleeping Beauty" - this is how the girl was nicknamed after death. But this was not only due to the embalming composition of Salafia.

For a long time, little Rosalia Lombardo remained practically in its original form. The photo, which can be found in any source, still demonstrates the extent to which the body has survived. But about a hundred years have passed since her death. At the same time, she had light baby skin, which was not touched by signs of decay. The curls and bow were the same as during life.

After a while, inexplicable events began to take place in the chapel. One of the parishioners claimed to have seen Rosalia open and close her eyes. The chapel attendants began to smell lavender, which is usually the smell of small children.

A fact that contradicts medicine

All this could not fail to attract the attention of scientists. They had little hope of making new discoveries, but what they found was truly amazing - the girl's brain showed activity twice, which can only be characteristic of a living person!

Dr. Paulo Cortez, who led medical research, was amazed at this discovery. Indeed, in medicine, there are cases when the body could "resurrect" after being dead for half an hour. And also the state of coma can last for several years. However, by the time Rosalia Lombardo became the object of medical study, she had been in her coffin for 73 years.

Some believe that the girl's soul returned to her body for a while when brain activity was recorded at intervals of 33 and 12 seconds. Then the surprised researchers carefully checked the equipment and the accuracy of the experiment, but no error was found - Rosalia Lombardo really "came back" to life for a while.

Amazing eyewitness accounts

It is widely believed among the clergy that Rosalia Lombardo is God's messenger, although this is not officially confirmed by the Catholic Church.

Some Palermo residents say they witnessed the girl open and close her eyes. Believe them or not? Who knows. But the only indisputable fact remains the registration of the electrical activity of the brain, which has been dead for decades. Such indications can only be characteristic of living nervous tissue.

The chemical composition, until recently kept in secret, had such an effect on the body that the child seemed not dead, but asleep. Mysterious events constantly took place around the girl's body. For example, one of the abbots, Father Donatello, says that one of the monks lost his mind in a short period of time: “He claimed that Rosalia's eyes were open within thirty seconds. Despite the fact that the caretaker was considered insane, after that a group of scientists was called to conduct research. "

The solution to the mysterious composition

Scientist Dario Piombino Maskali at the end of the twentieth century revealed the secret of the composition with which Rosalia's body was embalmed. It included zinc, formalin, glycerin and other components. The solution was injected into all tissues. Subsequently, studies were conducted in the United States, during which Alfredo Salafia's balm was tested. The results exceeded all expectations - with the help of the composition, it was really possible to keep bodies from decay. Thus, there is a scientific explanation for how this girl survived. Rosalia Lombardo surprises to a greater extent with her mystical visits during the presence of doctors, as well as parishioners and ministers of the chapel.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the body began to show slight signs of decomposition. Therefore, it was processed and placed in a chamber filled with nitrogen.

Taphonomy is a science dealing with death

Rosalia's case is far from the only one. Although the composition of Salafia balm has been revealed, this case does not cease to excite medical scientists. Currently, a whole direction has arisen in science called taphonomy. It studies the laws that are inherent in the processes of physical decomposition. In America, in the state of Tennessee, there is even a "farm of the dead" - a laboratory in which research is carried out in this direction.

Man is powerless against death. Having invented practically everything for a comfortable life, having learned to cure many diseases and gaining control over the forces of nature, people still cannot go beyond understanding: what happens to a living being after death.

Conservation of bodies defying logic

However, this feature is not always final for the physical body. People don't know where the soul goes. And is she coming back? Or, perhaps, having spent forty days on Earth, she leaves for other worlds irrevocably?

This is still unknown to scientists, and no one knows whether the secret of the afterlife will be revealed in the near future. However, the phenomenon of Rosalia Lombardo, as well as other bodies preserved after physical death, leaves a lot of spiritual food for ordinary mortals, as well as fields for the work of researchers.

Other incorruptibility cases after death

It is believed that meditation practices help to achieve the state of incorruptibility after death. It is known that the body of the yogi Paramahansa Yogananda has not been touched by decomposition for a long time. Also famous is the case of Lama Itigelov, who was also found by Russian scientists without any changes.

Thus, Rosalia's example once again confirms: the physical and spiritual worlds are very close. Perhaps her soul decided to return for a while, not only to become a new mystery for scientists. Who knows, maybe little Rosalia Lombardo decided to remind humanity how close she is and how little time people have for good deeds.

Photos from open sources

Scientists, like all kinds of independent researchers, including religious ones, are still amazed at the unique mummy - two-year-old girl Rosalia Lombardo, who for 97 years has retained her amazing freshness, as if the child had not died, but only fell asleep. (site)

Why is this phenomenon haunted by scientists? The fact is that the girl does not change over the years. And it is difficult to find a logical explanation for this:

• Suppose, scientists say, that Dr. Alfredo Salafii, who performed this embalming immediately after the death of Rosalia on December 6, 1920 (the girl lived only two years and died of pneumonia, after which her father decided to keep the body of his beloved daughter as a keepsake) , possessed some miraculous way of mummifying corpses. However, the technology of embalming Salafia was found in his archives of manuscripts, and experts did not find anything in it that could somehow explain the phenomenon with the "sleeping beauty";
• Sometimes, religious leaders argue (let us clarify, the burial of the girl Rosalia was practically the last in the history of the Capuchin catacombs in Palermo and unremarkable), the body of a saint can retain its vitality, which is most often observed in Buddhist monks, who practically do not die completely. But in this case, all this does not fit in with the death and embalming of the most ordinary two-year-old girl;
• Perhaps Rosalia Lombardo, ufologists suggest, is not quite an earthly girl, and therefore aliens took part in her embalming, as well as death, and they preserve her body for some future resurrection;
• With this statement, which is so fabulous (as in Pushkin's "The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Heroes"), the alleged resurrection is correlated only not with aliens, but with the otherworldly forces of the Kingdom of the Dead.

Facts and evidence that the mummified girl is alive

Meanwhile, the body of Rosalia Lombardo, being in a glass coffin, has practically not changed for a whole century, even the blonde hair, the girl's eyelashes look like living ones, and the bluish eyes, of course, continue to look at this world, because they sometimes open slightly. Let it be quite a bit, but this is enough to amaze the imagination of tourists who flock here from all over the world to look at this miracle.

Photos from open sources

But is it only the trembling of the eyelids that amazes in this mummy? The attendants claim that some miracles are constantly happening near the glass coffin: either the key will fall from the grate that closes the entrance here, then the girl sighs, then the monks will hear footsteps in her crypt. And one caretaker named Donatello even "went crazy with his mind", claiming that once Rosalia completely opened her eyes and looked at him with her blue eyes, full of hypnotic attractiveness and incredible strength. I must say that the monks claim that the girl's body exudes a pleasant smell of wildflowers and, most often, lavender. And although this does not always happen, the fact itself is simply amazing.

Photos from open sources

Skeptics, of course, do not believe in all this, explaining the trembling of the mummy's eyelids by the play of light, for example, this point of view is shared by the caretaker of the catacombs, an ardent materialist Dario Piombino-Maskali. However, scientists installed modern equipment that monitors the mummy, and this is what amazed them: the computer recorded weak impulses from Rosalia's brain, which can only be in one case - the girl is asleep, but she is not dead - fantastic and nothing more.

But that's not all: a modern video camera that can shoot in slow motion, for example, a flower blooming or a swelling of a bud, has recorded that the mummy's eyelids are actually opening slightly. So to blame everything on the play of light and the conjectures of the monks does not work in any way ...

Rosalia Lombardo was born on December 13, 1918, in the Italian city of Palermo, Sicily region (Palermo, Sicily, Italy). The baby contracted pneumonia, and her life ended on December 6, 1920, shortly before the age of two.

Heartbroken father Lombardo painfully experienced the death of his daughter. He contacted a Sicilian chemist and embalmer named Alfredo Salafia and asked to keep Rosalia from decay.

Alfredo responded to the request of his grieving father and made an embalming solution according to his own formula. Among other chemical compounds, the mixture included formalin - for disinfection, zinc salts and salicylic acid - to give the body strength, glycerin - to prevent the mummy from complete dehydration and alcohol - to quickly dry the body. The solution was pressurized through the arteries and distributed through the blood vessels.

Messina paleontologist Dario Piombino Mascali claimed in the late 20th century that he was able to figure out the secret of Alfredo's recipes after examining the discovered diary of a Sicilian embalming expert. Subsequently, the technique worked successfully in practice.

Rosalia became Salafia's most famous work. Referred by some reporters as "the most beautiful mummy in the world," the dead girl in her early years was no different from the living one. The impression was that Lombardo was just sleeping sweetly. Not only the soft tissues of the face remained incorrupt in the mummified body. A Sicilian chemist treated the baby's eyeballs, hair, eyelashes, brain and insides.

Over the next hundred years, "The Sleeping Beauty" (Italian "Bella addormentata") remained practically unchanged. And yet, in the mid-2000s, the first signs of decomposition began to appear. Currently, the mummy is in the chapel of Saint Rosalia in a glass-enclosed coffin filled with nitrogen and insulated with lead foil. For complete tightness, the glass container is sealed with wax. The chapel itself is located in the farthest part of the Capuchin Catacombs.

Located under the Monastery in Palermo, the Capuchin Catacombs, where about 8,000 people are buried, are visited by thousands of tourists from all over the world every year. Rosalia, along with US Vice Consul Giovanni Paterniti, who was buried here, remain the main attractions of the catacombs to this day. The baby was the last of the buried, and the official closure of the Capuchin Catacombs took place back in 1881.

The true facts from Rosalia's short life could not but be "diluted with rumors", which have accumulated in abundance over the decades. In fact, there is not a single snapshot of a living Sicilian girl, not a single official document revealing the identity of her parents.

Best of the day

Rumor has it that Rosalia was the daughter of Mario Lombardo, an Italian general. It is known that the girl was born fragile and weak. For 24 months of her life, she experienced so much pain and fought so many diseases that it could be enough for a whole adult's life.

At the end of the 20th century, people appeared who assured that the baby's mummy had long crumbled, so that visitors to the catacombs are lured simply by a wax copy of Lombardo. To refute the rumors, X-ray equipment was delivered to the chapel of St. Rosalia. Studies have shown that not only the cellular structure has been preserved, but also the internal organs of the mummy. Rosalia's translucent coffin also helped establish that her brain remained intact, albeit reduced by 50% in volume due to mummification.

In 2009, a documentary about "the most beautiful mummy in the world" was released. The audience was shown the girl's body outside and inside, including the hands lying on the sides. Previously, the upper limbs were hidden under the outer veil.

Several years ago, the media reported that Rosalia "opened her eyes." Her left eye seemed to have opened by almost 5 mm, while her right eye - by 2 mm. As they write, under the eyelids, the blue eyes of the baby were bared. Some were so amazed at the terrible phenomena that they began to claim that her spirit had returned to the body of the deceased.

The mummy scares the tourists visiting the catacombs, who think that the girl's eyes are really opening. But the superintendent of the catacombs Dario Piombino-Mascali says it's all about an optical illusion.

According to Dario, Rosalia's eyelids were never closed tightly. At different times of the day, light falls on the mummy's face at certain angles, which creates the illusion of opening and closing eyes.

Others call the real reason for Rosalia's "open eyes" fluctuations in temperatures in the catacombs.

The Capuchin catacombs are divided into a corridor of monks, men, women, professionals, priests, a new corridor, a cubicle of children and virgins. Video and photography in the catacombs is prohibited.