Tales from the crypt that bury Medici history in ever deeper mystery

John Hooper in Rome
Monday March 21, 2005
The Guardian

Donatella Lippi calls it a "terrible problem". She and other researchers who have spent the past 10 months prising open the tombs of one of Europe's most illustrious families, the Medicis of Florence, have got more than they bargained for.

They have found the remains of eight children they cannot place on the family tree. Worse still, some of the bodies appear to have been switched around or muddled up over the centuries.

The resulting confusion is making yet more difficult an already immense and challenging undertaking that is shining light into the recesses of the Renaissance.

The aim of the project, which reached the end of its first phase last week, is to build up a picture of the lives, and deaths, of the members of a family that ruled Florence for more than 300 years and funded many of Italy's greatest artists.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,12576,1442285,00.html#article_continue

I hope they find Bianca Capello's tomb, and that she still has her hair. That's the only way they can prove the legend that she and her Medici husband were murdered with arsenic.

I love a mystery.

Sue

?

and African grave makers turned up as wooden coffee table in New York,
grave robbing has become de riguer.

You never heard of Lara Croft?
The tomb raider?

Or Indiana Jones?

And I'm saying this as a Euro-American.

Formerly, you were buried in the church yard for a few years, then the bones were removed & stacked compactly. Otherwise, graves would take over too much good land after a few generations. The rich & famous got special tombs--usually because they paid for them. But even saints were dismembered to supply relics.

Ever see "Hamlet"? Alas, poor Yorick was losing his plot to make room for Ophelia.

However, it's rude to dig up somebody else's ancestors.

When you consider all their contributions in terms of art, science and medicine - definitely at the top in influence.

and the intrigue - oh my!

I can never learn enough about them.