Lima, Peru -The Catacombs and The Library

Cheers

Wow, what an intense place to be.

July 20, 2009

This is just too creepy. I'm not sure this would have been a pleasant surprise.

July 16, 2009

Definitely would be creepy me - I think I would stay upstairs too. And to make 'art' out of the bones, I don't want any of that art in my house.

July 14, 2009

I think seeing that many bones would kind of creep my out. Very interesting though!

July 10, 2009

Those bones are kind of creepy!

July 09, 2009

My goodness - this is fascinating to me.

July 09, 2009

Lima, Peru -The Catacombs and The Library

THE LIBRARY

The Monasterio de San Francisco is famous for
its remarkable library, where thousands of antique
texts are on shelves, some dating as far back as
the conquistadors.

This 17th century library contains 25,000 leather
bound books and 6,000 parchments from the 15th
to the 17th centuries.

There are also 2 large music books, or song books
Which were used by the choir. They were large
enough to be read by everyone in the choir loft, as
they did not have individual hymnals.

THE CATACOMBS

The most fascinating component of the monastery is
The descent into the catacombs, which were dug
beginning in 1546 as a burial ground.

As many as 75,000 bodies were interred here. It is
Unknown how many levels down they go.

The corpses were stacked on top of each other and
allowed to decay. The monks then cleaned the bones
and sorted them in bins according to types of bones;
(see photo middle left of skulls). There are also bins
of femurs and bins dedicated to other types of
bones.

The most bizarre sight is a round well and inside is
a perfectly symmetrical arrangement of skulls and
femurs with a collection of skulls in the center.

I did not take the top picture, as they did not allow any photography in the library - it was taken off the interent.

Bill took the middle picture of the skulls with my camera but he had to sneak to do it and couldn't use a flash because they didn't really want pictures in the catacombs.

The last picture was taken off the internet. Bill tried to get a picture of it and it turned out almost black but was identical otherwise. Rather than lightening and lightening it, and still not looking right, we just "borrowed" a photo from the internet.

It was interesting to note that I had no idea about the catacombs or bones - it was a complete surprise to both Bill and me. When we were on the tour there were some people who said they would wait upstairs for the tour, they did not want to go down into the catacombs. I thought they were just claustrophobic. I didn't realize this was a burial ground for 75,000 people and the bones were wall to wall on every level - everywhere you looked were human bones!

There was a service or mass going on in the main sanctuary and when we were in the part of the catacombs right under sanctuary you could hear them singing and foot shuffling and it was obvious we were right under the people. I don't know how I would feel about worshiping in church knowing that all these bones, once human beings, were stored under me!