A little girl’s body sits inside a glass coffin in the underground tunnels beneath Palermo, Sicily. Her name is Rosalia Lombardo, and she died more than 100 years ago when she was just under two years old. But when people look at her today, they can hardly believe she has been dead for so long. Her blonde hair still looks perfect, her skin appears soft and smooth, and you can even see her blue eyes under her closed eyelids. People who visit her call her the “Sleeping Beauty of Palermo” because she really does look like she is just taking a nap.
Rosalia came into the world on December 13, 1918, but her life was cut short on December 6, 1920. She was only days away from turning two when she died from a lung infection called bronchopneumonia. Doctors think she probably got sick during the Spanish Flu outbreak that killed millions of people around the world in 1918. Her father, Mario Lombardo, could not accept losing his little girl, so he decided to do something unusual to keep her with him forever.
