Guanajuato’s famous mummies are set to go on a national tour beginning in January 2020.

The preserved corpses that now call the Museum of the Mummies of Guanajuato their permanent home will begin their journey at the León State Fair in January, before continuing on to other cities, including Aguascalientes and Mexico City.

Guanajuato city Mayor Alejandro Navarro Saldaña said the traveling exhibition will consist of a dozen carefully selected mummies from the museum’s collection.

“The project includes an exhibition of 12 mummified bodies that will be accompanied by information about the process of mummification, as well as the history and legends that surround the museum, one of the most visited in Mexico,” Saldaña said.

The mummies are expected to have a good reception at the León State Fair, which this year welcomed over six million visitors from Mexico and abroad.

Guanajuato’s mummies were discovered in 1865 when the city imposed a grave tax after a cholera outbreak had put cemetery space in short supply.

Bodies that were removed from well-sealed crypts when families were unable to pay the tax were found to have been mummified due to the area’s temperate and extremely dry climate.

The Museum of the Mummies of Guanajuato enjoyed record attendance over the long Revolution Day weekend on November 16-18, welcoming 16,500 visitors to view the 57 mummies on display.

The numbers were up 16.6% over the same weekend in 2018. The museum took in 1.22 million pesos (US $63,000), a 27.6% increase over the same weekend the year before.

Source: El Universal (sp)