Self-Guided Tour of Mount Carmel Cemetery

Meet us where Chicago’s crooks and Cardinals are laid to rest

A self-guided walking tour of the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside is a reflective and historic experience. As you wander the beautiful and peaceful grounds, you will walk among the graves of mobsters and archbishops, you’ll see a rotating monument and a notorious gravestone, and you’ll learn about legends and ghosts.

The Mobsters:

It seems the whole of Chicago’s organized crime syndicate from the era of Al Capone and Chicago Outfit leader Sam Giancana are laid to rest somewhere within the 886 acres that comprise Mount Carmel Cemetery and the adjacent Queen of Heaven Cemetery.

Both Giancana and Capone are buried here in the Mount Carmel Cemetery (read more about the Al Capone Gravesite here). In an interesting twist, you can also find the gravesites of both a victim and a killer from the notorious St. Valentine’s Day Massacre that put Capone on the FBI’s radar.

John May was Bugs Moran’s auto mechanic. Seeing as how Moran was Al Capone’s chief rival in the bootlegging business, it was a dangerous business to hang around that gang. May was buried here after he was gunned down in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. His grave is not far from that of Jack “Machine Gun Jack” McGurn who was a member of Capone’s gang and a likely mastermind behind the assassinations.

The Bishops:

The Bishop’s Mausoleum houses eight of Chicago’s Cardinals. The ornate structure that was painstakingly created in Italy and transported to Chicago boasts bronze gates that flank the entrance doors as symbols of the gates of heaven. It is only open to the public once per year for the annual organized trolley tour of cemeteries given by the Hillside Mayor, but the mausoleum is a sight to behold even from the outside.

The “Rotating Monument”

Angelo and Rosa Di Salvo, two Italian immigrants to Chicago, are buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery beneath a massive and intricately carved monument that appears to be representative of a family photo. The huge monument swivels on its base when you touch it, meaning it must be perfectly balanced, an engineering feat for a monument of that size.

The Italian Bride

And now for the legends and ghosts. Julia Buccola Petta died in childbirth in 1921. She was buried wearing her white wedding dress alongside her dead infant son in Mount Carmel Cemetery. For six years after her death, Julia’s devastated mother, Filomena, reported terrifying dreams in which her daughter came to her. In the dreams, Julia insisted that she was alive and needed help.

With much persistence, Filomena was granted an order for Julia’s exhumation. In 1927, Julia was removed from the ground, and onlookers were shocked to see that she had not decayed at all. Though her infant son and the casket showed decay and decomposition, Julia herself appeared as though she were, in fact, still alive.

Based on the miraculous story, Filomena raised funds to erect a grand monument to Julia. You can see the monument at the cemetery today. Fixed onto the stone is a photo that was reportedly taken on the day of exhumation six years after Julia died. It shows a woman in a white dress who shows no signs of decomposition.

The ghost of a woman dressed in white with dark hair is said to roam the cemetery at night.