An extraordinary 'Dance of Death' exhibition is to open in Russia involving 80 skeletons and mummies dressed in period costumes from all around Europe.
The gruesome display is being put on at the Novosibirsk Death Museum and visitors will be invited to stay all night with the gruesome exhibit.
Pictures from the exhibit show the human remains bedecked in outfits and jewellery 'typical for different social classes and ages in England, France, Germany, Italy and Russia'.
Museum head Sergey Yakushin said: 'The main idea of this exhibition is that we are all mortal, that death visits everyone.
'It makes everyone equal regardless of social status, wealth and religion.'
He said: 'We aim to show as many classes as possible, from noblemen to artisans to peasants, as well as a variety of ages.
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'Some of the dresses will be original from these European countries and from Russia.
'Some will be very exact copies of what people wore from the 17th to the 19th centuries.'
The exhibition is based on the medieval 'Dance or Death' - or 'Danse Macabre' - a notion commons to many cultures and art from the Middle Ages till the beginning of the 20th century, reported The Siberian Times.
Such artistic depictions showed the fragility of life, and how death united all regardless of social class.
The dead are shown summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance to the grave.
These depictions show popes, emperors, kings, along with children, labourers and peasants.
Yakushin said that the exhibition 'resembles' the world-famous Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, where dehydrated and embalmed bodies of monks and others are preserved.
But he claims: 'Our new exhibition will not be a copy of the Palermo catacoms. Rather it will be our reading of the Medieval Dance of Death.'
Some of the skeletons and mummies are real, others artificial, it is understood.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
