Our last day in Sicily. Our Easyjet flight from Palermo to Rome was at 4.30 pm, so we had the whole morning to kill. Actually despite having been in Palermo for five days, there were still many more places we did not visit ( this pakdokter realised after coming home and reading more about Palermo!) because we had spent quite some time browsing through Giorgio Armani, Gucci, Geox, Prada and the other more 'current museums'.
We hired a local taxi and requested to be sent to the Catacombs of Palermo, situated quite a distance away from our hotel, as this was not covered during our horse-cart tour of the city. The catacomb turned out to be quite an experience. The visit to this underground labyrinth of an old church was like a horror movie experience. Skeletal remains in well-preserved costumes dating from 1850's stood in rows within recesses along the walls of the catacombs. There were skeletons of ordinary citizens, of the priests, of professionals like doctors and lawyers in their recognisable outfits as well as of convicted criminals who were executed by hanging. Our knowledge from the short forensic medicine posting in medical school helped us confirm this from the evidence of the broken neck bones. Of course the catacomb guardians had also left the noose which killed them at their necks!
One three year old girl was so well preserved that she looked as if she was just sleeping!
For many this visit would have been a very frightening experience. But for pakdokter and gang, we had been quite familiar with skeletal remains. In the first year at medical school, each of us had our own complete skeleton set. And pakdokter used to fall asleep in bed with pakdokter's own skeleton set after a long and tiring day trying to identify and memorise the different names of every little part of the human skeleton!
Photography was actually not allowed inside the catacomb. Pakdokter had downloaded some of the pictures below by googling out the Catacomb of Palermo.
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