Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato

The Museo de las Momias stands on the esplanade of the Panteón de Santa Paula, Guanajuato's municipal cemetery, on a hill west of the historic centre. It displays bodies that mummified naturally in the cemetery's crypts. In the 19th century the city charged a burial tax, and when families stopped paying, remains were exhumed to free the space. In 1865 workers removed the body of a French doctor, Remigio Leroy, and found it dried rather than decomposed; similar finds continued for about a century. According to the museum, the collection numbers 111 men, women and children.

Why the bodies were preserved is not fully settled. Only a small share of burials mummified, all of them in above-ground crypts rather than earth graves, and researchers point to the warm, dry climate drying the bodies quickly, helped by the porous stone of the crypts and minerals in the soil. Since 2007 a research project has studied them, finding signs of illnesses such as tuberculosis and anaemia.

At first the mummies were kept in the cemetery's catacombs, where the gravedigger led visitors past bodies propped against the walls. Their fame grew with the early-1970s lucha libre film El Santo contra las momias de Guanajuato, and the city built a proper museum; it was thoroughly remodelled in 2007. The visit follows themed rooms, including the Angelitos room with babies dressed as angels and saints, and a room with what is billed as the world's smallest mummy, a fetus. Each body carries a label with its year of exhumation and, when known, the person's name.

This is one of Guanajuato's most visited sights and it is not for everyone: the displays are close-up and some are disturbing, especially those of children.