The Ferentillo Mummy Museum is inside the crypt of St. Stephan’s.
The crypt was originally a medieval church and the present church of St. Stephan was built on top. Since then the dead were buried there until the Napoleonic Enactment of Saint Claude in 1804, which prohibited burials within the town walls and ordered the exhumation of burials previously carried out.
It was in this way that the bodies that had been buried in the crypt were discovered to be perfectly preserved, mummified, due to the presence of particular microorganisms in the soil and the temperature and humidity of the site.
At present the Museum houses 24 human mummies, 10 mummified heads, more than 400 skulls, a sealed coffin and two mummified birds.
During the last studies of the crypt new burials were discovered in the ossuary, maybe those of the non-baptised.
