Rosalia Lombardo was only two years old when she died from pneumonia in 1920. Her premature death left her father so heartbroken that he approached the noted embalmer, Alfredo Salafia, and asked him to preserve Rosalia’s body. Alfredo Salafia, a skillful embalmer and taxidermist, performed such an excellent operation on Rosalia that nearly a hundred years after her death, the little girl appears to be merely dozing beneath the glass case in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy, where she rests. Her little cheeks are stiff puffy. Tuffs of blonde hair are gathered around a knot above her head and tied by a silk bow. Even her internal organs are intact, as revealed by X-ray scans. Nicknamed the “sleeping beauty”, Rosalia Lombardo has gained the reputation of being one of the world’s best preserved mummies.

Rosalia’s perfectly preserved body is only part of the attraction. Visitors who come to see her swear that the little girl actually blinks here eyes. These sequence of pictures show her eyelids eerily opening and closing by a fraction of an inch. Her blue eyes are intact, like the rest of the body, and can be seen glistening in the low lights inside the catacombs.