Rosalia Lombardo (13 December 1918 – 6 December 1920) was a Palermitan child who died of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...

, resulting from the

Spanish flu The 1918–1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus. The earliest docum ...

, one week before her second birthday. Rosalia's father, Mario Lombardo, grieving her death, asked Alfredo Salafia, an embalmer, to preserve her remains. Sometimes called "Sleeping Beauty", hers was one of the last corpses to be admitted to the

Capuchin catacombs of Palermo The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo (also Catacombe dei Cappuccini or Catacombs of the Capuchins) are burial catacombs in Palermo, Sicily, southern Italy. Today they provide a somewhat macabre tourist attraction as well as an extraordinary histori ...

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

Embalming

Thanks to Salafia's embalming techniques, the body was well-preserved.

X-ray An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...

s of the body show that all the organs are remarkably intact. Rosalia Lombardo's body is kept in a small

chapel A chapel (from , a diminutive of ''cappa'', meaning "little cape") is a Christianity, Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. First, smaller spaces inside a church that have their o ...

at the end of the

catacomb Catacombs are man-made underground passages primarily used for religious purposes, particularly for burial. Any chamber used as a burial place is considered a catacomb, although the word is most commonly associated with the Roman Empire. Etym ...

's street and is encased in a glass covered

coffin A coffin or casket is a funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, for burial, entombment or cremation. Coffins are sometimes referred to as caskets, particularly in American English. A distinction is commonly drawn between "coffins" a ...

, placed on a wooden pedestal. A 2009 ''National Geographic'' photograph of Rosalia Lombardo shows the mummy is beginning to show signs of

decomposition Decomposition is the process by which dead organic substances are broken down into simpler organic or inorganic matter such as carbon dioxide, water, simple sugars and mineral salts. The process is a part of the nutrient cycle and is ess ...

, most notably discoloration. Her body is starting to take on a yellow waxy skin texture. To address these issues, the mummy was moved to a drier spot in the catacombs, and her original coffin was placed in a

hermetically sealed A hermetic seal is any type of sealing that makes a given object airtight (preventing the passage of air, oxygen, or other gases). The term originally applied to airtight glass containers but, as technology advanced, it applied to a larger ca ...

glass enclosure with

nitrogen gas Nitrogen is a chemical element; it has symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a nonmetal and the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table, often called the pnictogens. It is a common element in the universe, estimated at seventh i ...

to prevent decay. The mummy remains one of the best preserved bodies in the catacombs. While there are claims that Capuchin catacombs curato
Dario Piombino-Mascali
and his associates were the first to discove
Salafia's unpublished manuscripts
Professor Umberto Di Cristina and co-author were the first to discover the unpublished manuscript in their book ''La Dimora delle Anime'', which was published in February 2007, two years before Dario Piombino-Mascali and his colleagues published their work. An English translation by the authors o
"The discovery of the Salafia handwritten manuscript and formula. Chronological and biological considerations"
note 21, p. 90 from the book ''La Dimora delle Anime'' by Di Cristina et al., 2007:"Alfredo Salafia studied the process of mummification of the bodies and dedicated his life to the research of the methods to preserve the corpses by the use of pharmacological substances and chemical preparations. He wrote a treatise entitled ''Nuovo Metodo Speciale per la conservazione del cadavere umanointero alla stato permanentemente fresco'' (New Special Method for the Preservation of the Entire Human Cadaver in the State of Permanent Freshness). It consists of around 30 handwritten pages where Salafia performs a concise description of the mummification techniques from the Egyptians to the Capuchins, and provides information on the European and American studies in the first years of the twentieth century; in his treatise he describes his own (embalming) method and describes the history of the embalming procedures of some illustrious personages, (whose bodies were) well-preserved thanks to his method: among those (are), Francesco Crispi, the cardinal Michelangelo Celesia, Archbishop of Palermo, and the Senator Giacomo Armò»." The authors state that "there are no published documentary, archival or photographic sources which support the claim that Alfredo Salafia embalmed Rosalia Lombardo" The embalming formula, as stated b
Dario Piombino-Mascali et. al
is described as "one part

glycerin Glycerol () is a simple triol compound. It is a colorless, odorless, sweet-tasting, viscous liquid. The glycerol backbone is found in lipids known as glycerides. It is also widely used as a sweetener in the food industry and as a humectant in pha ...

, one part

formalin Formaldehyde ( , ) (systematic name methanal) is an organic compound with the chemical formula and structure , more precisely . The compound is a pungent, colourless gas that polymerises spontaneously into paraformaldehyde. It is stored as ...

saturated with

zinc sulfate Zinc sulfate is an inorganic compound with the formula ZnSO4. It forms hydrates ZnSO4·''n''H2O, where ''n'' can range from 0 to 7. All are colorless solids. The most common form includes water of crystallization as the heptahydrate, with the che ...

and

zinc chloride Zinc chloride is an Inorganic chemistry, inorganic chemical compound with the chemical formula, formula ZnCl2·''n''H2O, with ''n'' ranging from 0 to 4.5, forming water of hydration, hydrates. Zinc chloride, anhydrous and its hydrates, are colo ...

, and one part of an alcohol solution saturated with

salicylic acid Salicylic acid is an organic compound with the formula HOC6H4COOH. A colorless (or white), bitter-tasting solid, it is a precursor to and a active metabolite, metabolite of acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin). It is a plant hormone, and has been lis ...

", and was entered into the body through a single-point injection, most likely into the

femoral artery The femoral artery is a large artery in the thigh and the main arterial supply to the thigh and leg. The femoral artery gives off the deep femoral artery and descends along the anteromedial part of the thigh in the femoral triangle. It enters ...

via a gravity injector. Rossella Lorenzi of Discovery News reported that the formalin was used to kill bacteria, the glycerin used to prevent

desiccation Desiccation is the state of extreme dryness, or the process of extreme drying. A desiccant is a hygroscopic (attracts and holds water) substance that induces or sustains such a state in its local vicinity in a moderately sealed container. The ...

, and the salicylic acid used to eliminate any fungi within the flesh, with the purpose of the zinc salts being

petrifaction In geology, petrifaction or petrification () is the process by which organic material becomes a fossil through the replacement of the original material and the filling of the original pore spaces with minerals. Petrified wood typifies this proce ...

. The mummy has achieved further notoriety for a phenomenon in which her eyes appear to open and close several times a day, revealing her intact blue irises. In response to speculation about her moving eyelids, Piombino-Mascali stated that "It's an

optical illusion In visual perception, an optical illusion (also called a visual illusion) is an illusion caused by the visual system and characterized by a visual perception, percept that arguably appears to differ from reality. Illusions come in a wide varie ...

produced by the light that filters through the side windows, which during the day is subject to change ... er eyesare not completely closed, and indeed they have never been". In 2021, a German heavy metal band ''Under The Night Sky'' released an EP called ''Rosalia (1918-1920)''.

References

Sources

*Dario Piombino-Mascali, 2020. ''Lo spazio di un mattino. Storia di Rosalia Lombardo, la bambina che dorme da cento anni''. Dario Flaccovio, Palermo.

External links

Recent photograph
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lombardo, Rosalia 1918 births 1920 deaths 20th-century Italian people Italian children Deaths from pneumonia in Sicily Deaths from the Spanish flu pandemic in Italy Mummies Child deaths from disease