Museo delle Mummie di Borgo Cerreto

The Centro di documentazione Baronio Vincenzi — Museo delle Mummie occupies the crypts beneath the church of SS. Gesù e Maria at Borgo Cerreto. Its collection of human remains, coffins and personal objects provides an anthropological record of life and burial practices in the Valnerina.

Why it matters

Twenty-three individuals were recovered from the church's crypts, where the local microclimate naturally mummified some of the remains. The burials date from the early eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. The collection has supported research into past life, health and funerary customs, and the documentation centre bears the name of the physician Baronio Vincenzi.

What to notice

The collection includes eight fully mummified bodies, seven partially mummified remains and eight skeletons; eleven individuals remain in their original wooden coffins. The displayed material includes the remains of a soldier who died following a firearm wound and a woman estimated to have been about twenty-five to thirty years old. Three skulls are associated with Baronio Vincenzi's surgical and anatomical work. Clothing and personal objects help place the burials within the history of the village.

Context and history

The Vincenzi family built and endowed the church. A Latin inscription dated 1640 on the portal records its construction by Baronio Vincentio, a physician; a family sepulchre slab dated 1620 survives inside. Two crypts were excavated for burials, one reserved for the Vincenzi household. Their ventilation and dryness caused natural mummification rather than deliberate embalming. The documentation centre opened in 2011 and forms part of the Comune di Cerreto di Spoleto's diffuse museum network. An Art Bonus campaign supported conservation work on four mummified bodies.