Crypt of the Mummies

Beneath the Cathedral Basilica of Oria lies the Crypt of the Mummies, a 16th-century oratory that preserves the mummified bodies of the Confraternity of the Death.\n\nThe underground space features 22 niches at human height that once held the bodies of confratres subjected to a mummification process.\n\nThe tufa altar is enriched by a 17th-century painting depicting the Madonna del Carmine with the joyful Child and, at her feet, holy souls of Purgatory among tongues of fire. On the projecting cornice above the niches, the skulls of the oldest mummies were placed and removed from their compartments to make room for new deceased.\n\nThe mummification ritual likely began at the end of the 15th century. The last mummy in the right row of the crypt’s staircase, damaged by water infiltration and thus removed from its niche, dates to 1601, while the last in the left row is dated 1781.