The Medicis to be unearthed in Florence

A team of Italian and American scientists is about to dig up the Medicis.

The powerful merchant family ruled Tuscany during the Renaissance and sponsored much of its finest art. The team of pathologists, archaeologists and historians is planning to exhume the bodies of 49 Medicis to study what they ate, what illnesses they suffered and other information that was buried with them underneath the Medici Chapel in Florence.