With a dose of morbid humour, Viennese look death in the eye

A visitor looks on at death masks of Ludwig Van Beethoven (second, left), Joseph Hayden (centre), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (second, right) and Franz Schubert at the Vienna Funeral Museum in Austria. Photo: AFP

Even in midst of a deadly pandemic, the Viennese seek to look death straight in the eye - an attitude on display at a morbidly humourous museum devoted to death and burial.

Right below the funeral parlour of the Austrian capital's famous Central Cemetery, burial shrouds and coffins have been on display since 1967, making the Vienna Funeral Museum the first museum to trace how we mourn the dead.