THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MUMMY OF THE WORLD: ROSALIA LOMBARDO

Rosalia Lombardo was an Italian child born in 1918 in Palermo, Sicily. She died of pneumonia on December 6, 1920. Rosalia's father, General Lombardo, was sorely grieved upon her death, so he approached Alfredo Salafia, a noted embalmer, to preserve her. Her body was one of the last corpses to be admitted to the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo in Sicily.
Thanks to Salafia's embalming techniques, the body was well-preserved. X-rays of the body show that all the organs are remarkably intact. Rosalia Lombardo's body is kept in a small chapel at the end of the catacomb's tour and is encased in a glass covered coffin, placed on a marble pedestal. A 2009 National Geographic photograph of Rosalia Lombardo shows the mummy is beginning to show signs of decomposition, most notably discoloration. To address these issues the mummy was moved to a new drier spot in the catacombs, and her original coffin was placed in a hermetically sealed glass enclosure with nitrogen gas to prevent decay. The mummy is one of the best preserved bodies in the catacombs.
BY: LINDA CAROLYNE RODRIGUEZ MARIN

RUSSIA'S MODERN MUMMIES

This is the story of how one of Russia's greatest communist dictators, Lenin, was mummified and placed on public display in Red Square Moscow. The programme examines the brave scientists that pioneered the first of this kind of body preservation. Failure would mean death under the regime of Stalin who ordered his adversary's body placed in permanent state.
This film contains unique footage of the world's only modern mummification lab, from archive to modern day. The scientists, who now continually tend the mummified Lenin, do so with regimental precision. We go behind the scenes to see some of the most extraordinary images to come from communist Russia.
2000 years after the last Egyptian pharaohs were mummified an ancient ritual was revived in early twentieth century Russia. The world's first modern mummy was created in 1924 and Red Square, Moscow, is where it still lies to this day. This is the body of Lenin. A frail body that has been experimented on for over 70 years. Other dictators have been mummified by the same lab, including Joseph Stalin and Ho Chi Minh.
This film reveals, in detail, the shocking and pioneering work of the Russian mummification scientists and their extraordinary experiments on dead human bodies.
By: LINDA CAROLYNE RODRIGUEZ MARIN

SICILI'S MUMMIES

Scattered across the island of Sicily, beneath picturesque churches, are thousands of mummified bodies. And most mysterious of all is one of the last to be enshrined: she's known as the sleeping beauty Rosalia Lombardo a child barely two years old when she died nearly a century ago, somehow her corpse remains flawlessly preserved.

Now, for the first time, a scientific team of mummy hunters is on the case, unearthing hundreds of Sicily's miraculous dead, exploring how this baffling culture of mummification could operate within the Catholic Church itself, and finally, revealing the secret formula behind Rosalias perfect preservation.
By: LINDA CAROLYNE RODRIGUEZ MARIN