Sedlec Ossuary – The Church of Bones, Kutna Hora

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to visit this fascinating place, whilst on a road trip around the country, in all honesty, it was quite probably the main reason I was in the country I would say.

A little bit of information about the site is as follows:

The Sedlec Ossuary

is a Roman Catholic chapel, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints, part of the former Sedlec Abbey in Sedlec.

The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, whose bones have, in many cases, been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel.

Four bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners of the chapel. A chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the centre of the nave with garlands of skulls draping the vault. Other works include piers and monstrances flanking the altar, a coat of arms of the House of Schwarzenberg, and the signature of František Rint, also executed in bone, on the wall near the entrance.

The description of the site makes it sound very morbid, however this is not really the case and the site is not dramatized in any way and the history and the fact that these are human remains is very well respected by the site.

For more information, please visit their very informative site – SedlecOssuary.com