The Catacombs of the Capuchin Convent are a 17th-century underground cemetery carved into the tuff. It contains 8,000 embalmed corpses that lived between the 17th and 19th century. The 300 square metre structure is divided into four corridors: the priests’, men’s, women’s and professionals’ corridors. The entrance is on the left side of the Madonna della Pace Church main façade. The bodies, dressed in period clothing, are identified by name, surname and date of death. The professionals’ corridor also contains painter Velázquez‘s embalmed body.
Little is known about the method Capuchin friars used to preserve corpses. It was common to dry the corpses naturally in drip pans. They were later washed with vinegar and exposed to the open air for a few days, then covered and placed in niches or wooden boxes. A bath in arsenic and milk of lime was instead given to those who died of epidemics.