There's a Wall in Palermo Covered in Prisoners' Last Words

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]In Palermo, there's a wall covered in prisoners' last words. The Inquisition tortured them in this room. The building is Palazzo Chiaramonte Steri. For nearly two centuries, it was the Inquisition's seat in Sicily. Prisoners scratched hundreds of inscriptions into the cell walls, names, [music] dates, drawings, prayers, devotional images, appeals.

[00:00:22]Some were Christians of Jewish descent suspected of returning to Judaism in secret. Some were accused of witchcraft, some were heretics, some were healers.

[00:00:33]The Inquisition tribunal was abolished in 1782.

[00:00:39]The cells were plastered over. The walls were silent for more than a century.

[00:00:43]Then in 1906, the Sicilian ethnologist Giuseppe Pitre found them again. He chipped at the plaster. The inscriptions came back.

[00:00:53]Names, dates, faces, voices on stone.

[00:00:57]You can still read them in the room where they were written. Part three, the secret society in the top