The decapitated corpse of a 56-year-old woman was found in an apartment block's stairwell, police in the northern Italian city of Brescia said on Thursday.
Two residents in the building made the grim discovery when they returned to their apartment early on Tuesday and called police.
The woman may have committed suicide by throwing herself down the stairwell from the 10th floor of the building, severing her head on the stair railings, according to investigators.
Coroners were performing an autopsy on the woman and prosecutors have opened a probe into her death.
The woman lived in the building with her mother and relations within her family were "complex", local daily Il Giornale di Brescia reported.
