The sixteenth-century convent of Santa Maria la Grazia, better known as the convent of the Repentite, housed prostitutes converted to monastic life and supported by courtesans in service through a tax paid to the Palermo Senate, a tribute necessary if the former prostitutes wanted to dress like "honest women". The crypt was accidentally brought to light in 2005 during renovation work on the former religious complex on Via Divisi, now used for university departments, revealing a magnificent treasure: a seventeenth-century altar decorated with majolica tiles, the tomb of the Mother Abbess and the benches where the bodies of deceased nuns were placed for the natural drying process, carried out before they were buried in the pit beneath the crypt floor.