The Ossuary at Kutná Hora

Today we took a trip to Kutná Hora, a town about an hour outside of Prague. It is a town home to old silver mines, a church called St. Barbara's, and the Bone Church--the Sedlec Ossuary. Needless to say, the highlight of today's trip was the Bone Church. St. Barbara's was an interesting foray into Gothic architecture, but the Bone Church was the part of the trip that (I hope) will best stand out in my mind.

There was some monk a long time ago who got it into his head to take the bones that were buried in the graveyard outside the chapel and begin "decorating" with them. Honestly, I can't think why anyone would think to do this. When I see bones, I say, "Ew, cover that up," not "Oh, let's see if I can make some lovely rosettes for my mantle out of these human pelvic bones." It just doesn't make sense to me. But in some fit of madness (and obviously creativity pushed to the extreme) this monk developed a most unique decorating system for the chapel that would skyrocket it into guidebook fame in a few centuries.

There is some kind of superstition surrounding the Bone Church--I think it has something to do with people believing that the bones of people who died in the Plague would bring the living luck (it seems to me that those bones would be more likely to bring death than anything else), but I could be wrong about this, so I refer you to the links at the end of this post if you want more info.

The thing that I find most interesting about this place is the sheer number of bones, skeletons, and people (dead, not tourists) that are in this church. There are stacks of them in the four corners,



the skulls are lined up along the candle-holders,



and there is a giant chandelier (the most famous part of the chapel) made up of every bone that is found within the human body (with lots of extras)



After having looked at this incredibly creepy, though "pleasantly morbid" (as I described it earlier), I realize that there is no better way that I can imagine my bones being used after I die. I can only hope that I change my mind before death.

This is a more complete (though some might say less reliable) description of the chapel: Sedlec Ossuary, and here is a link to a documentary about the chapel (it's in Czech and I have no idea what it's saying, but maybe I'll give you a kind of good idea of what it's about?).