Unraveling the enigma of Rosalia Lombardo: The child mummy with surprisingly realistic ‘open’ eyes

A secret formula not only allowed Rosalía Lombardo to become one of the best-preserved mummies on Earth, but many even claim that she can open her eyes.

Deep in a dark catacomb in Sicily, a young girl lies in a glass-topped coffin. Her name is Rosalia Lombardo, and she died of pneumonia caused by the Spanish flu just a week before her second birthday in 1920.

Her father was so heartbroken that he sought the help of an embalmer and taxidermist to preserve his son. The embalmer, a renowned Sicilian preservation professor named Alfredo Salafia, mummified Rosalia Lombardo so perfectly that her internal organs are still intact a century later.

In fact, it’s hard to look at the tiny body in the glass coffin and not believe that she will wake up at any moment. Her skin is still smooth and porcelain, and her golden hair is neatly tied back with a large silk bow. And most eerily, her crystal-blue irises are visible beneath her blonde lashes.

This aspect of her preservation has led to her being known as the “blinking mummy,” because some people swear that Rosaria Lombardo’s eyes still open and close during the day.

Why Rosalía Lombardo’s eyes seem to open

The eyes of Rosalia Lombardo have fuelled Sicilian lore for the past 100 years. She is one of 8,000 mummies in the catacombs beneath the Capuchin convent in Palermo, Sicily. And of the thousands of visitors who flock to see the blonde-haired girl, many report seeing her eyes slowly open.

In fact, a video composed of several time-lapse photos appears to reveal Lombardo opening his eyes a fraction of an inch.

While this set the Internet alight with stories about the mummy being able to open eyes, in 2009, Italian paleopathologist Dario Piombino-Mascali debunked the central myth surrounding Rosalia Lombardo.

“It’s an optical illusion produced by the light filtering through the side windows, which is subject to changes during the day,” he said in a statement, according to ScienceAlert.

Piombino-Mascali made this discovery when she noticed that museum workers had moved the mummy’s case, causing it to shift slightly and allowing her to see its eyelids better than ever before. “They’re not completely closed, and in fact, they never have been,” she said. So when the light changes and hits its eyes at different angles, it can look as if the eyes are opening.

How a skilled embalmer prevented Rosalía Lombardo’s body from decomposing

Furthermore, Dario Piombino-Mascali also managed to discover the elusive formula that was used for Lombardo’s impeccable preservation.

When Alfredo Salafia, Rosalia Lombardo’s embalmer, died in 1933, he took the secret formula to the grave. Piombino-Mascali tracked down the embalmer’s living relatives and discovered a trove of his papers. Among the papers, she came across a handwritten memo in which Salafia recorded the chemicals he injected into Rosalia’s body: formalin, zinc salts, alcohol, salicylic acid and glycerin.

Formalin, now widely used by embalmers, is a mixture of formaldehyde and water that kills bacteria. Salafia was one of the first to use this chemical to embalm bodies. The alcohol, along with the arid climate of the catacombs, dried out Lombardo’s body. The glycerin kept his body from drying out too much, and the salicylic acid prevented the growth of fungus.

But zinc salts, according to Melissa Johnson Williams, executive director of the American Society of Embalmers, were the critical element in preserving her remarkable state of preservation. Zinc, a chemical no longer used by embalmers, essentially petrified her tiny body.

“The zinc gave her rigidity,” Williams told National Geographic . “You could take her out of the coffin and hold her up and she would stand up on her own.” The embalming procedure was simple, consisting of a single-point injection with no drainage or treatment of the cavity.

The blinking mummy today

Rosalia Lombardo was one of the last people buried in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo before they were closed to new burials. The more than 8,000 burials in the catacombs date back to 1500 and include nobles, members of the clergy and bourgeois of the city. But Rosalia’s are by far the most special due to their preservation.

Her father, according to the catacombs’ website, ordered his embalmer to make her “live forever.” And since the catacombs were opened to the public, she has been referred to as the “most beautiful mummy in the world” and even earned the nickname “The Sleeping Beauty of Palermo.”

Today, Rosalía Lombardo is housed in a new nitrogen-filled display case designed to protect the remains of this young woman from oxygen, light and even tourists, who can visit the catacombs for just 3 euros.

“It was designed to block any bacteria or fungi. Thanks to a special film, it also protects the body from the effects of light,” paleopathologist Dario Piombino-Mascali told Gizmodo.

Now, Piombino-Mascali hopes that tourists will stop making up “totally unfounded stories” about Rosalia Lombardo, the “blinking mummy.”