HOUSTON—Inside one of Houston’s best-kept secrets, soft music and hushed words are piped over the sound system, the sweet scent of flowers leaves a faint trail in the air — and the business of death is saluted.

Welcome to the National Museum of Funeral History, a warehouse-like building in a working-class pocket north of Houston, where exhibits extol everything from the birth of embalming to the mourning rituals of the Victorian Era.

The museum’s often poignant mix of historical artifacts, offbeat exhibits (the replica of a Civil War morgue) and curiosities (a collection of human hair fashioned into jewelry — a popular way to honor lost loved ones in Victorian times) has quietly been drawing visitors since 1993.

Now, officials are hoping to lure in a wider audience with an ambitious new addition: “Celebrating the Lives and Deaths of the Popes.”

The 5,000-square-foot exhibit marks the only display of papal artifacts outside the Vatican, many of which were donated to the museum by the Pope’s personal tailor, Roberto Consorsi. They include two of the three sets of funeral vestments made for John Paul II, who was buried wearing one of the sets, and the embroidered sash — or fascia — the Pope wore every day.

It took the museum two years to secure permission for the project from the Vatican, and another year to put the exhibit together, said Genevieve Keeney, the museum director who is also a bereavement counselor and licensed funeral director.

“We’re truly blessed to have this,” said Keeney, who spent hundreds of hours painstakingly recreating papal funeral rituals — often from photographs supplied by the Vatican. The marble and slate floors, purple-shaded flowers, even the number of pleats on the pope’s funeral bier carefully match those used during the actual ceremonies.

The exhibit is designed to recreate the experience of attending a papal funeral, with visitors guided through a series of hallways and rooms that each represent a different stage in the mourning process.

In one niche, the pontiff’s death is announced by a trio of broadcasters: British, American and Spanish-speaking. Mounted on the walls are magazine covers and the front pages of newspapers, published after the deaths of various popes. The publications, which go back to 1878 and the death of Pope Pius IX, were purchased on e-Bay by museum president Robert Boetticher, also a licensed funeral director.

Next, through a set of red curtains, is a re-creation of the pope lying in state at St. Peter’s Basilica, flanked by two members of the Swiss Guard. A mannequin representing the pontiff is clothed in the funeral vestments made for John Paul II; the Swiss Guard figures wear blue and yellow uniforms donated by the corps.

The exhibit also includes replicas of the three nested caskets — cypress, lead and fir — used in papal burials, and of Pope John Paul II’s crypt beneath the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica.

When Roberto Consorsi, the papal tailor, arrived for the opening and first saw the exhibit, he could only utter one word: Perfecto, said Keeney. “He said he felt like he was there again.”

Museum officials hope visitors who come for the exhibit will stay for the site’s other offerings, which intertwine everyday life with the rituals of death; the serious with the humorous; popular culture with history.

Take, for instance, the museum gift shop where shoppers can buy everything from miniature cast iron replicas of hearses to mugs bearing the museum’s slogan: Any day above ground is a good one.

On the cavernous main exhibit room, coffins ranging from plain to ornate share space with more than a dozen gleaming hearses of every style and decade (including one used to carry the body of Princess Grace of Monaco).

The collection includes a 1916 Packard funeral bus, designed to carry an entire funeral party, and a “casket for three” made in the 1930s for a couple who planned to kill themselves after the death of their child. They changed their minds.

A back alcove, dedicated to the funerals of presidents, is filled with mementoes such as the funeral bills from the services for FDR and George Washington, a mourning band worn at Abraham Lincoln’s burial and the original eternal flame from John F. Kennedy’s tomb.

The museum also boasts a collection of hand-carved coffins from Ghana, which are crafted to represent the life of the deceased. The vibrantly painted pieces by sculptor Kane Quaye include ones shaped to resemble a crab, a fishing canoe and a chicken.

“Only a certain segment of people are interested in caskets and mourning clothes,” said Boetticher. “We feel the papal exhibit will be quite a draw for other people, and that then when they come in they’ll see everything else.”