Screaming Mummies of Guanajuato: Mexican Death Museum

The smallest mummy in the world is an almost perfectly-preserved six-month old fetus.

It’s on display in central Mexico at the Guanajuato Mummy Museum – alongside dozens of other human mummies, their corpses dried and contorted in chilling poses.

Mummies of Guanajuato

Built next to a cemetery, the famous (and macabre) museum has more than 100 mummies – the largest collection in the western hemisphere.

Many mummies still have their hair and are wearing their shoes and tattered remnants of clothing.

Unlike the Egyptian mummies at the British Museum, though, these mummies are not thousands of years old.

History of the Guanajuato mummies

Gravediggers exhumed the first mummified body in 1865.

More human bodies were soon disinterred.

The story goes that a new law required relatives of the deceased to pay a burial tax to keep their loved ones buried forever. If they couldn’t pay, authorities dug up the preserved corpses, which were mummified naturally by the dry mineral-rich soil.

By the late 1880s, curious people started coming to see the mummies, sometimes even breaking off pieces as souvenirs.

Eventually, the local government established a museum to house the mummies.

Today, dozens of the disinterred mummies of Guanajuato – their skin looking like parchment paper – are displayed behind glass cases.

Many look like they’re screaming through open mouths, as if they’d been buried alive. And indeed, some may have been…

Mummies of Guanajuato buried alive

So how did the people die?

Most of the Guanajuato mummies were people who were victims of a cholera epidemic that raged through the area in the early 1800s.

To help control the spread of the disease, bodies were buried immediately.

Tragically, it’s thought that some of the sick and dying were buried alive.

Other Guanajuato, Mexico, mummies

Chamber of Death

More grisly is the museum’s “chamber of death.”

An open coffin contains a mummy with spikes piercing right through the body and skull.

The plaque explains in Spanish that this was the unfortunate man’s punishment for offending the Catholic church.

What’s it like to visit the Mummy Museum in Guanajuato?

Visiting El Museo de Las Momias de Guanajuato (the Spanish name for the museum) is one of the top things to do in Guanajuato.

It’s a hit with both local Mexican tourists and foreign visitors. According to National Geographic, the Guanajuato Mummies Museum is the biggest source of income for the city after property tax!

Still, some visitors prefer to skip it, feeling it’s too morbid.

We have to remember, though, that death in the Mexican culture is viewed differently than it is by North Americans and Europeans. Take Mexico’s Day of the Dead holiday, where death is embraced and celebrated as part of life.

Certainly, this extraordinary mummy exhibit gives pause for reflection.

Who were these people when alive? What were their stories – their dreams and hopes?

For us, it was with some relief when we finished our tour of the museum, with its well-preserved mummies, and rejoined the land of the living outside in the sunshine.

See here for the museum’s location.

Guanajuato isn’t just about Mexican mummies

Now you know about the Museum of the Mummies of Guanajuato.

It may be the biggest tourist attraction, but there’s more to Guanajuato than this!

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the city of Guanajuato is absolutely enchanting. It’s a little like San Miguel de Allende, but with a more Mexican feel.

Its center unfolds across various hills. On top, the cobblestone streets are too narrow for cars, so they drive through tunnels underneath. Pedestrians get to walk about freely through the heart of the city on top, without worrying about traffic.

In Guanajuato, we also visited the Diego Rivera Museum – lots of cool art there! And it wasn’t at all disturbing…

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Photo credits: © Janice and George Mucalov, SandInMySuitcase 

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