Death and disaster
A macabre guide to Europe
Vacations are usually happy, lively experiences,
full of sunshine, good food and wine, and openhearted enjoyment. But the
occasional darker note, for contrast, can make your vacation even more memorable.
Europe is full of gruesome sights. Some, like Auschwitz and Birkenau, reflect our recent troubled history, and deserve to be visited with respect and thoughtfulness. But other gruesome sights are more innocent – a trip on the ghost train, a late night horror movie. Here’s a selection of the best of Europe.
1. The Kaisersgruft in Vienna. The Habsburg emperors rest in state in the crypt of the Capuchin church. Some of these tombs are marvellously baroque works – Maria Theresa and her husband Franz lie above a puffed-up sarcophagus, while other tombs are decorated with laurel-wreathed skulls or even skulls wearing the Imperial crown, with Roman-style trophies, with dramatic swags. On the other hand Maria Theresa’s son Joseph II, who hated ostentation, lies in a simple copper tomb not far from his mother’s grave.
If you want to make your visit to the Habsburgs complete, though, you’ll have to visit two other churches. Ferdinand IV ordered his body to be embalmed in 1654, and since then the entrails of each Habsburg have been interred in the Ducal Vault under the cathedral choir, while their hearts have been deposited in urns in the Augustiner church.
2. The catacombs of Palermo offer a more
democratic trip to the
Underworld. Almost a thousand citizens of Palermo
were mummified here – the soil seems to desiccate bodies rather well
– and they are shown in lifelike postures, standing or sitting, as
well as in coffins. There’s even the mummy of a small baby in its cradle.
And every mummy is wearing its Sunday best. There’s a bit of cheating
involved though – the clothes are stuffed with straw to maintain the
shape better.
Alas, mummification was banned in 1881, so there are no modern mummies to preserve punk or glam rock costumes for later generations of tourists to gawk at.
3. Jeremy Bentham, University College, London. This utilitarian philosopher argued in favour of individual and economic freedom, but he had some less popular ideas – including that of making the bodies of the famous into ‘auto-icons’, realistic portrayals to inspire future generations. His own auto-icon is displayed in a case in University College, London, the foundation of which was inspired by his writings.
In fact the auto-icon is not really a gruesome sight
at all. Dressed in his plain and dignified clothing, with his walking stick
in hand, he looks like any eighteenth century gentleman about to take a
constitutional. And he 
still keeps regular hours, apparently – 7.30
in the morning to 6 in the evening, every Monday to Friday. He’s even
said to be allowed to vote at meetings of the College Council.
4. I don't know what it is about Capuchins in particular, but yet another Capuchin church has a fine collection of macabre artefacts. The church in Rome, on Via Veneto, doesn't just contain mummies – the crypt is actually built out of bones, which form the baroque decoration of the grottoes. This is gruesomeness in real style.
5. The Silkeborg museum in Denmark is best known for Tollund Man – the well preserved body of a sacrificed man with a braided leather rope around his neck. But the peat bogs which kept his body intact also yielded up Elling woman, just a hundred metres away from him. Like Tollund man, she was hanged, probably as a sacrifice, and then buried in the bog. They both date from about 350bc and the remarkable thing is that you can still see just how Elling woman dressed her hair, and the stubble on Tollund man’s chin.
6. Hallstatt, Austria. There’s not much
space in the graveyard here, so every fifteen years residents are turfed
out of their houses and their remains transferred to the bonehouse. Each
skull is lovingly decorated with flowers, leaves or crosses, and the name
of the deceased and date of death written on it. Some even have wreathes
of laurel or flowery 
garlands painted around them.
7. Another bonehouse of slightly less colourful type is hidden away underneath St Laurence church in Hythe, Kent. It’s a bargain with admission at only 50p – if you’re taking a ferry from Dover, this is just off the main road and well worth a visit. There are two thousand skulls, and what may well surprise you is that they all seem to have excellent teeth!
8. Otranto’s basilica, in the heel of Italy, preserves the skulls of the eight hundred martyrs who chose death rather than conversion when the Ottoman Turks invaded in 1480. They’re contained in little glass-fronted cupboards behind the statue of the Virgin on the altar – a remarkably prosaic display for such macabre trophies.
The basilica’s worth visiting even if you’re not that interested in the skulls – there’s a fine pavement from the twelfth century showing the tree of life. In its branches hide all kinds of strange creatures and narratives – the tower of Babel, elephants, the fall of Adam and Eve, King Arthur, unicorns and Alexander the Great. It’s an amazing work and you can easily spend a couple of hours ferreting out its secrets.
9. Mary King’s Close, Edinburgh. This perfectly preserved seventeenth-century street was hidden underneath the City Chambers when they were built in 1753. Now the street has been excavated and restored, and projections show the life of the inhabitants in the great Plague of 1645, all based on the lives of real people and on painstaking historical research.
A shrine in one room holds dolls and stuffed animals – tributes to the ghost of a sad little child who died in the plague.
10. My final choice is a Derbyshire village which nowadays looks just like any other – except for a few memorials. But back in 1665, the village of Eyam was in the grip of the Plague. The rector, William Mompesson, told villagers to stay within the village, protecting their neighbours from the plague; but this heroism took a heavy toll on the village. On the hillside above the village, Elizabeth Hancock buried her husband and six children – all dead within a week; the graves are still there today. A service of remembrance is still held every Plague Sunday (the last Sunday in August).
A few more ideas if that wasn't enough for you:
- Mummies in St Michan's, Dublin.
- The head of John the Baptist in San Giovanni Decollato, Rome.
- The London Dungeon - a nasty little museum of torture implements.
- Sedlec, Czech Republic - a huge bonehouse artistically arranged