As summer comes to a close, we find ourselves politely enduring stacks of other people's vacation photos. Or, what's the word for "stack of photos" if it's being thumbed through on an iPhone? Either way. These are refreshing: Images from an architectural history professor who toured through the catacombs below a little Baroque church Oratorio di San Lorenzo in Palermo, also known as The Museum of the Dead.

The author's descryption: "Like the sanatorium in The Magic Mountain, this is one of those places where every casual visitor ends up a patient at the moment when the nervous joking stops and the infection sets in." Would that make a great postcard or what.