If there was a beauty rating among mummies, then this beautiful little girl would take first place every year. It is impossible to believe that she has been dead for over 100 years. How alive. It seems that she will soon wake up smiling and say that this is a prank and you have been played. But unfortunately, she left this world long ago.
She has her own little secret, from which people fall into a stupor, turn pale and lose consciousness. Next, we will talk about the secrets of beauty and the secrets hidden behind the angelic appearance of the most beautiful mummy in the world.
Rosalia Lombardo was only two years old when she died of pneumonia back in 1920. Her untimely death plunged her father into shock and depression. He decided to seek help from the famous specialist Alfredo Salafia and asked him to preserve Rosalia's body with the help of embalming and mummification. To somehow tame your pain, rub.
Alfredo Salafia, a skilled embalmer and taxidermist of his time. He performed an incredible, beautiful and complex operation on Rosalia, that even a hundred years after her death, it seems that the girl is just sleeping under glass in a wooden box. The girl's body is in the Capuchin catacombs in Palermo, Italy.
Her small cheeks still look firm and healthy plump. Locks of blond hair are tied neatly over the head and tied in a silk bow. In addition to the beautiful appearance, so to speak, in relation to a dead, small child. Her internal organs are intact, which is confirmed by X-ray scans.
Promotional video:
Rosalia Lombardo has long been nicknamed "The Sleeping Beauty", gaining a reputation as one of the best surviving mummies in the world.
Rosalia's perfectly preserved body is only part of the story. The girl's visitors swear she blinks and winks at them. On the gif, we see her eyelids opening and closing. Or does it seem so?
Some claim to have seen her eyes. Sleeping Beauty's beautiful blue eyes have also been preserved in excellent condition. They are not damaged, like most of the body. You can see how they shine, how alive.
Research says changes in temperature inside the crypt can cause Rosalia's eyelids to contract and unclench, producing a blinking effect. But the curator of the Capuchin Catacombs, Dario Piombino-Mascali, puts forward a different theory. Piombino-Mascali believes that the winking of Rosalia's eyes is an optical illusion. Caused by the angle of light from the windows onto her face. As the day goes by and the angle of incidence of the light changes, it seems that the girl opened and closed her eyes several times.
Piombino-Mascali made the discovery in 2009 when he noticed workers at the museum had moved her coffin, causing her body to move slightly, allowing him to see her eyelids better than ever before. Piombino-Mascali realized that Rosalia's eyes were never completely closed.
Another big discovery was the secret formula that Alfredo Salafia used to embalm Rosalia's body. Which further kept him in perfect condition.
In 2009, Piombino-Mascali found living relatives of Alfredo Salafia. After talking with them, they agreed to hand over documents belonging to Salafia, where he wrote down his secret procedure and formulas of the substances used.
Unlike typical embalming, where internal organs are removed and empty cavities filled with solutions and completely dry out the body, Dr. Salafia made a small puncture in the body and injected a mixture of formalin, zinc salts, alcohol, salicylic acid, and glycerin. Each ingredient in the mix does a unique and subtle job.
Formalin killed all bacteria, glycerin ensured that the body did not lose moisture, salicylic acid destroyed fungi and mold. The magic ingredient was zinc salts, which froze Rosalia's body in its original state. They made the skin and muscles stiff and resilient, preventing the cheeks and nasal cavities from collapsing.
The Sleeping Beauty is one of eight thousand mummies in the Capuchin catacombs in Sicily. It was one of the last corpses to be taken into the catacombs.
Rosalia's X-ray shows that her brain and liver are intact. The mesh in the picture is a coffin under the body.
Probably the most famous mummy in the whole world is Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. And the most beautiful and young Rosalia Lombardo.