Temple of bones in the Czech Republic. Temple of bones in Prague. Interior of the lower chapel

Ossuary in Bohemia (Czech Republic) - description, history, location. Exact address and website. Tourist reviews, photos and videos.

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What is primarily known about the suburb of the once financial center of the Czech Republic Kutna Hora - Sedlec? That's right, the famous church Kostnice v Sedlci. In the Czech word “kostnice” one can easily guess the common root with the Russian “bones”; this, in general, is a chapel in which human remains are kept (this method of burial existed in the Middle Ages in Europe). But in Sedlec they are not just kept, but the entire church is decorated with them: chandeliers, decoration of arches and vaults, and even crosses - everything is made of human bones.

It is said that about 40,000 bones were used for finishing.

In a word, in order to think about the eternal, there is no better place than the Ossuary.

History paragraph

In the 13th century, there was a Cistercian monastery in Sedlec, whose abbot, Henry, was sent to the Holy Land by King Otokar II in 1278. There, the monk, according to the tradition of that time, collected some earth from Golgotha ​​and, upon arriving home, scattered it over the monastery cemetery. Since then, the land of the abbey has become holy, and representatives of the most noble families not only of the Czech Republic, but also of other neighboring states wanted to be buried in the monastery cemetery.

The cemetery expanded very quickly, and in the 15th century, the Black Death and religious wars raged in Europe, so after some time there were almost no burial places left. At that time, the practice of secondary burials became widespread - the bones were placed in chapels (which were called ossuaries), and the dead were buried again in their place.

The Sedlec Ossuary owes its fame largely to an unknown half-blind monk who dug up skeletons from graves, after which he bleached the bones and put them in pyramids. As a result, six pyramids were built, several meters high. When the monk died, the brothers did not destroy the bizarre structures, but the chapel with the creepy “monuments” was closed. At the end of the eighteenth century, the noble family of Schwarzenberg became the owners of the ossuary and monastery lands, and in 1870 they instructed the carver Frantisek Rint to do something with this, ahem, pile of bones. The master bleached the bones again and began to decorate the chapel with them; we can see the result of the work to this day. Among other things, tourists are especially interested in the chandelier, which uses all the bones of the human skeleton, the large Schwarzenberg coat of arms, monstrances and the signature of the author himself.

How to get there

You can get there by bus from Prague from the Florenc bus station to Kutná Hora, from there by minibus to Sedlec. Either by train from Prague to the main station of Kutna Hora, from where again by bus to Sedlice or on foot.

The most convenient way is to drive your own car, which will also allow you to see the sights along the way (for example: the city of Kolin with its amazing cathedral). From Prague, take the E67 highway, turn to Kolin, then follow road 38.

Ossuary in Sedlec

Do you like horror films? Do you want to get a powerful adrenaline rush that will make your skin crawl and your hair stand on end? Then you just need to visit the ossuary in Sedlec. The photo of the chandelier alone hanging from the ceiling of the chapel is impressive. After all, this lamp is made entirely from human remains. The fringe from the phalanges of the fingers looks especially gothic. In this article we will tell you about the unusual. Organized excursions from Prague go to Kutná Hora (in its vicinity there is an eerie chapel). But you can see the attraction yourself without contacting travel agencies. How? Read the information below.

Ossuary in Sedlec: how to get there

There are several options for the independent traveler. There is a Florenc bus station in Prague. Cars depart from it several times a day to the city of Kutná Hora. There, right at the bus station, you should change to a minibus to Sedlec. It won't take long to travel. After all, Kutná Hora is separated from it by some sixty kilometers. And Sedlec is actually a suburb. The minibus gets there in ten minutes. The second option is the train. Electric trains to Kutný Hory depart from The second option is preferable for those who want to explore this ancient town along the way. Kutny Hora was once famous for its own mint and silver mines. The motorist needs to leave Prague on the E67 road. Then follow the sign for Colin. It is recommended to make a stop in this city to explore the wonderful cathedral. Next you need to follow highway 38. At the end of the road you will find the Sedlec Ossuary. The address of this attraction is: Zámecká, 284 03 Kutná Hora.

What are ossuaries

According to the general Christian tradition of the church, the land of the cemetery is considered sacred. According to beliefs, when the announcement of the End of the World and the Last Judgment is sounded, the dead will rise from their graves. They will represent the Christian community. That's why cemeteries used to be built near churches. The situation was changed by the Great Plague and a series of subsequent disastrous epidemics. The number of dead has increased significantly. And there was a catastrophic shortage of places in the cemetery. The Church canon did not give the right to burn the remains of exemplary Christians who died in unity with the Church. Burials on top of old graves led to animals and rain exposing the corpses - and this served as the cause of new epidemics. Thus, people came up with the idea of ​​ossuaries. The name comes from the Latin word ossis - “bone”. Skeletons were torn out of their graves and stored in special chapels. And their place was taken by new dead people. Thus, the ossuary in Sedlec is not something unique. Ossuaries exist in many countries, and the largest - six million skeletons - is kept in

What makes the Sedlec Ossuary unique?

Still, Paris is known as the location of Notre Dame, the Louvre and other attractions. Only a few people know that the city’s dungeons contain several million remains (more than the number of living Parisians). But Kutný Hora, in addition to the glorious history of silver mines, has a rather creepy “calling card” - the ossuary in Sedlec. Why is the chapel so interesting? The number of skeletons? Not at all. There are about fifty thousand of them here in total. The Sedlec Ossuary would have remained an unknown ossuary if not for the master František Rint. It is his wonderful carving that tourists from all over the Czech Republic and even from abroad come to see.

History of the cemetery

First of all, tourists are concerned with the question of where so many skeletons came from in small Sedlec. Maybe they were exported from abroad? This is not far from the truth. The fact is that in the Christian tradition there is a belief that it is very good for the salvation of the soul to be buried in a holy place - in a monastery or church. In the thirteenth century, a Cistercian monastery was located in Sedlec. King Otokar II of the Czech Republic sent the abbot of the monastery, Henry, to the Holy Land in 1278. The abbot returned home with a handful of earth, which he scooped up from Calvary - the mountain where Jesus Christ was crucified. He scattered this soil over the monastery cemetery. This strategic move greatly increased the income of the monastery. From now on, all rich people of both the Czech Republic and neighboring powers wanted to be buried at the monastery. The number of dead people kept coming, fueled by epidemics and religious wars. And already in the fifteenth century, the monks faced the need to build a ossuary in Sedlec.

Transformation into an ossuary

Together, the monks built a small chapel. They began to put old skeletons in it in order to put “fresh” dead in the vacated graves. The ossuary in Sedlec (Czech Republic) also became famous because a certain half-blind monk, whose name was lost in history, driven by a passion for order, began to bleach the bones with chlorine and place them in neat pyramids. And when he died, in the corners of the chapel there were six piles several meters high. None of the brethren had any desire to continue the monk’s work. The chapel was closed, and so it stood until the end of the eighteenth century.

Transformation into a unique attraction

The Age of Enlightenment, which also affected the Czech Republic, led to the secularization of European states and a decrease in the number of monasteries. In 1784, the monastery was dissolved by order of the emperor, and the monastery lands, along with the ossuary, were purchased by the noble Schwarzenberg family. For a long time, the new owners did not know what to do with the chapel. Finally, in 1870, a representative of the family came up with an original idea. He hired woodcarver Frantisek Rint. The master's task was to arrange the bones in the ossuary. A true genius manifests itself in everything. And the “material” at hand did not confuse the woodcarver at all. He bleached the skeletons again and got to work. The result of his work can now be admired in the ossuary in Sedlec.

The main attractions of the chapel

Master Rint understood the order to “create something Gothic” in his own way. He chose forty thousand human skeletons for his work. He took them apart into pieces and began decorating the chapel. As a result, the ossuary became more than just a macabre repository for human remains. This is a real work of art. Everything in the chapel is made of bones - small decorative details, vases, monstrances on both sides of the altar, and even the coat of arms of the Schwarzenberg family. The chandelier evokes great admiration and at the same time awe among visitors. The master showed in it, so to speak, aerobatics. The lamp uses all the bones in the human body. And to top it off, the master left an autograph on the wall. Guess what it's made of?

Ossuary in Sedlec: reviews

Not many people dare to go inside the chapel. But those who have overcome fear assure: the feeling of horror recedes into the background, one has only to look at the works of art filling the interior of the ossuary. After all, we contemplate ivory crafts with aesthetic pleasure. And it doesn’t give me goosebumps. And in this case, we see before us the bones of long-dead people. Moreover, not intact, in the form of a skeleton, but disassembled into fragments. If you ignore the origin of the material, it turns out very beautiful. But then soul-saving thoughts about the frailty of existence come to mind. In a word, tourists are advised to spend sixty crowns to see this miracle.

Restrained, well-trained Prague in style resembles a prim, excellent student. Not a single extra line and every brick in its place. The first week it delights, then it unnerves. So much so that even according to the domestic tradition of hanging billboards advertising chips on historical monuments, you begin to get bored.

But you can find a skeleton in everyone's closet. The Czech Republic decided not to limit itself to the wardrobe and assigned it to this business. It is there, in the Siedlce district, that the main ossuary of the country.

Come - you are always welcome here.

Every year 250,000 people come to see it. Will you dare to test your endurance?

Ossuary. Entrance to the territory.
The inscription is in four languages.

Are you ready to take selfies not in cafes and malls, but in a church made of bones? Then we declare preparations for the trip open!

The mosaic on the path suggests
that you have come to the right address.
Czech humor.

A little history (to nod understandingly to the guide, and not faint), the cost of entry, addresses of souvenir shops... Comparative characteristics of valerian and as an effective sedative and others nuances that are more pleasant to know BEFORE the excursion.

What do thousands of travelers come to see every year?

The ossuary in Kutna Hora is a very uniquely decorated church. To organize its interior decoration, it took 40,000 human skeletons.

At first glance, you won’t suspect anything: a small Church surrounded by a cemetery. Nothing remarkable.

You can even come here with children - but so what?

But once you step inside...

Hello - why did you come?

Bones on the ceiling and along the walls. A chandelier, columns, crosses, vases, coats of arms, cups are made from bones... The author of this gloomy structure even wrote his signature with bones.

The hall with the main exhibition is a semi-basement room.
We go down the stairs...

Chlorine-bleached skulls and shoulder blades, disinfected ribs and vertebrae, humeri and tibias... You can take an anatomy textbook with you and take a mini-inventory: you will find both os coccygis (from Latin - coccyx) and os sacrum (from Latin - sacrum) . You may not even know that each of us has so many bones.

Who thought of building something like this instead of sophisticated palaces? Why did they violate human remains? By the way, whose bones are these?!

Many, very many…

Victoria (37 years old, Vladimir):

“I didn’t want to go there, it’s not my format. But my husband insisted that it was a must see, and my son was also interested. I was frankly afraid that I would faint or something like that. In fact, pictures on the Internet are more frightening. And there, inside, you think about other things. It's not scary there, but very sad and calm. Children, especially the younger ones, don’t seem to feel anything at all: they run, scream, everyone is trying to steal or pick something... I didn’t faint, but I didn’t take pictures, and I don’t want to go back there again, although, I don’t regret that I visited.”

Human life, what are you?
Who is looking into your face?

It’s easy to tell a story, but it’s not easy to build an Ossuary

The history of the Ossuary (or ossuary: from the Latin “os” - bone) was started by the King of the Czech Republic, Otakar II. He sent one of the novices of the local monastery to Palestine. While at Golgotha, the monk took some sacred soil. He brought this earth to the Czech Republic and on a windy day scattered it over the cemetery, which after that also began to be considered sacred land.

Influential families of the Czech Republic and neighboring countries wished to bury their relatives in such a cemetery. The cemetery has become more in demand. But after the difficult year of 1318, when the plague was raging, there was no room left for new burials.

Enterprising Czechs got out gracefully. They removed all the old bones and built a cathedral and crypt for them nearby. And new dead people began to be buried in the cemetery. The trick was performed 6 times.

Now the cemetery looks like this.
Seventh shift...

During this time, 40,000 people found their last refuge in Sedlec. Some monk even built pyramids from all these phalanges, vertebrae and ribs.

But Frantisek Rint brought the church to its current form. He was invited by the Schwarzenbergs when these lands fell to them. Rint conceived and created the interior of the Ossuary. His main masterpiece is a chandelier in which every (!) bone of the human body was used.

The science of bones is osteology.
And this is an osteological chandelier.

In gratitude for the trust shown, Rint formed not only his initials, but also the Schwarzenberg coat of arms from the collarbones, shoulder blades, humerus, radius and ulna.

The Schwarzenbergs were not shy...

If you believe the legend, a visit to the Ossuary can bring a lot of money. To do this, you need to throw a coin in front of the altar. And if sometime in the future the person who performed such a ritual is in poverty, then fate will throw him sudden wealth.

Timofey (32 years old, Moscow):

"Amazing place! Who do you have to be to build something like this?! But it was worth the trip. You need to watch this once. You immediately think about different things that you usually don’t have time to remember. Everything is done beautifully, although creepy. Especially when you imagine that each bone belonged to some person who was like us: he lived, thought about something, dreamed about something... By the way, I didn’t feel any smell. I was more embarrassed by the perky selfies that other tourists took.”

Next to the cemetery there is a children's playground.
Ordinary. Not at all gothic.

How to get to the Ossuary without dying along the way?

The town of Kutná Hora is located 66 km from the Czech capital. The famous ossuary stands on its very outskirts, in the Siedlce district. This area is separated from the center by about 3-3.5 km.

There are two ways to get to bone deposits:

On one's own

An independent trip is suitable for those who:

• doesn’t want to get up early and run to Wenceslas Square by 8:00;
• knows how to drive, is ready to rent a car or get acquainted with Czech public transport alone;
• is friendly with maps, navigators and is not afraid of getting lost on the road;
• doesn’t like to live according to a schedule and always wants to change the route because “Look, what a colorful building, let’s stop and take a photo!”

Price - from 220 CZK (price of train tickets from Prague to Kutna Hora and back).

Getting there from Prague is not difficult: you can rent a car, or you can take a nap for an hour on the bus or train “Prague - Kutná Hora”.

Traveling in a rented car is a normal option.
There are no problems with parking.

A bus ride will cost 68 CZK. We choose a bus.
A train ticket costs 110 CZK. Checking the schedule.

Do you want to plan your trip wisely? Would you go... . There you will find a number of tips: addresses of trusted restaurants, coordinates of interesting locations that you can visit along the way, etc.

With a group excursion

This voyage is an option for those who:

• can't drive;
• does not speak Czech or English;
• wants to take a break from searching for attractions on the Internet;
• wants to be sure that by dinner that day (!) there will be .

Cost: €27 per person. Duration: 8 hours.

Mikhail (21 years old, Volgograd):

“We decided to go to Kostnitsa without fail. When you go inside, you get such a strange feeling... It’s not scary, no. You just remember that no one is eternal. You feel some kind of respect for death, or something... I don’t know how to describe it. But there is something to think about, even when you have already left. As for the bones... Everything is done so carefully and precisely that it is quite possible to abstract from the fact that you are surrounded by human remains.”

Abstract yourself...
and all will be well.

Reconstruction, work schedule, prices and other org. questions

Cost of tickets to the ossuary:

Full (for adults) - 90 CZK;
Preferential (for students, disabled people, children) - 60 CZK.

Opening hours:

On other days:

• November - February: 9:00 - 16:00;
• April - September: 8:00 - 18:00 (during this period on Sundays - from 9:00);
• October, March: 9:00 - 17:00.

Now in Kostnice reconstruction is taking place. The church is surrounded by scaffolding: the roof is being repaired and the façade of the building is being refreshed. The renovation will last 5 years. All this time the ossuary in the Czech Republic was and will be open for visitors.

In July 2015, the church looked like this. To the side and behind there is scaffolding. Reconstruction.

Fables periodically appear on the Internet that the ossuary is closed, but this is incorrect information. The city is run by smart people. They are able to imagine how many losses Kutna Hora will suffer if its main asset ceases to function for 5 years. Therefore, management will not take such measures.

Still nervous and afraid to ride in vain? Information can always be checked on the official website, at a travel agency, or based on reviews from recently returned tourists.

Photography is allowed, but without flash.

Both beautiful and scary...
Take photos... reflect later.

Souvenirs

There is a gift shop in the Ossuary itself, near it and near the Cathedral of St. Barbarians.

Gift shop in the ossuary.
The most popular souvenir is a skull.

Here you can buy both standard souvenirs (magnets, T-shirts, etc.) and more specific ones (knight figurines, keychains, magnets, postcards, cups with skulls and crossbones, ceramics, etc.).

Another souvenir is a T-shirt for her and for him on an impromptu display.
350 Kč.

This...that, but can everyone go there?

Particularly impressionable people who faint at the word “poop” have nothing to do there. The rest will not have nightmares or phobias. No one will go there every year, but one visit for general development is quite bearable.

If you are a believer and are worried about how the church treats such places, then you should talk about it with your confessor. He will tell you about the morals of your denomination.

Rita felt somehow uncomfortable here.

In the past, the bones were buried according to all the rules, The church still holds services in memory of the dead. Anyone can light a candle. This is hardly an insult to the deceased.

But less than ten years had passed, Rita came here again - this time with the children.

Now your wallet and psyche are ready for anything. While other tourists ooh, aah and try to stay conscious, you can expertly count all the collarbones and sternums and take a couple of epic photos. And then you look, and you’ll be able to snatch the cutest skulls from the souvenir shop.

Those who have been to the Czech Republic have probably visited the famous Ossuary. I think it is safe to say that at least 90% of visitors were shocked by what they saw. Today I want to talk about churches, temples or crypts similar to Ossuary in other countries.

In ancient times, it was common to use bones in religious traditions to honor the dead. It was for this purpose that crypts appeared in the temples of churches and their dungeons. Later, such caves turned out to be very useful, since during the plague, cemeteries no longer had enough space for burials.

In the photo below you will see tons of bones that line the walls, columns, towers, altars and even chandeliers. The bones belonged to monks, nobles, victims of epidemics and even virgins! However, most often the only surviving part of the skeleton was the skull.

While many may find it odd that a crypt is referred to as a “tourist attraction,” visiting such a site does not necessarily leave you feeling morbidly fascinated. Such an excursion can be shocking or sobering; however, the meaning of life and participation in the highest are beyond the terrible opposition to fate that occurs in us when we look at these bones.

If you have visited any other crypts that are not presented here, do not hesitate to add your photos!

Sedlec Crypt, Kutna Hora, Czech Republic

Chapel with skulls, Czermna, Poland

The chapel was built in 1776 by the parish priest Vaclav, who ensured that the bones of 3,000 people were located evenly along the walls. Under the floor of this chapel is the burial place of 21,000 people who died during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), due to cholera and famine.

Monastery of Saint Francis, Lima, Peru

The Monastery of San Francisco in Lima not only boasts a world-famous library and a place on the UNESCO World Heritage List, but also a crypt in the catacombs below the church. The skulls in the crypt are decoratively arranged in concentric circles separated by other bones. It is estimated that 70,000 people are housed in the blind.

Catacombs of L'ossuaire Municipal, Paris, France

Paris always has an answer to everything London does. This also applies to the catacombs. At the same time that they were being actively built in London, underground rooms for the burial of the dead were also being dug in Paris.
More than 6 million human bones decorate the walls of underground crypts. Old burial sites are open to tourists if the purpose of their visits is not vandalism, as was the case in 2009, when local authorities were forced to close access to the catacombs.

As in the London catacombs, there are many different tunnels with and without remains - a whole “underground Paris”.

Church of Santiago Apostol, Lampa, Peru

One of the city's most famous landmarks is the Church of the Apostle of Santiago. It was built from coastal pebbles held together with lime mortar. The time of its construction is the middle of the 17th century. Later, when the church was restored under the direction of a mining engineer, famous and popular in the city, Enrique Torres Belon (1887-1969), a beautiful chapel, richly decorated with marble, was added to the church. A plaster mold of the famous statue La Pieta (“mourning Christ”), created by Michelangelo, was brought specially from the Vatican, according to which a copy of the original statue was cast and the chapel was crowned with it. The mold, which was to be destroyed after casting according to the contract, was not destroyed, but was displayed in the city hall.

Exquisite carvings and amazingly beautiful paintings, painted in the colonial era by masters from the schools of Cusco and Quito, richly decorate the interior.

Torres Belon, ex-president of the Peruvian Congress in 1957, is buried in the chapel. The chapel itself is famous for the fact that it is decorated with human skeletons. Skeletons of hundreds of priests, estate owners and Spanish miners hang on the walls. The bones were transferred here after Torres Belon ordered the catacombs to be filled with cement to strengthen the foundation of the church. Thus, the last vestiges of generations of colonial nobility became the decoration for the tomb of the mining engineer.

Chapel of Bones, Evora, Portugal. The Ossos Chapel of Souls, or chapel of bones, is one of Evora's most famous monuments - and a creepy tourist attraction. The chapel was built by Franciscan monks in the 16th century. This death hall was built next to the Church of St. Francis. The chapel contains the skulls and bones of 5,000 monks, and 2 complete skeletons hang chained to the ceiling. Their identities remain unknown.

Capuchin Church of Santa Maria della Concezione, Rome, Italy

The crypt under the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, is divided into five chapels and contains the remains of 4,000 Capuchin friars. Buried between 1500 and 1870. The soil. Located in the crypt, it was brought from Jerusalem.

Crypt, Hallstatt, Austria

Hallstatt is a small town in Austria, in the federal state of Upper Austria. It is surrounded by a beautiful forest, mountains and a clear lake.

Despite its venerable age, the development of the settlement is hampered by the limited territory between the lake and the rocks. For this reason, there is an acute shortage of land in Hallstatt, including cemetery land. At the local cemetery, since the 16th century, every 10-15 years, the bones of the dead were removed from the ground and bleached in the sun. The skulls of the deceased were put on display in the ossuary, which is located in the chapel of St. Michael.

In 1700, skulls began to be decorated with symbols and marked with the names of the deceased, dates of birth and death. Many skulls have laurels for valor, roses for love, etc. Until 1800, painting was done only with black paint; later a bright, colorful style began to be used.

Cathedral of the Martyrs of Otranto, Otranto, Italy

The Cathedral of Otranto is a treasure of southern Italy.

It was built during the Norman period in the 11th century. and it has two amazing features.

Firstly, the mosaic floor, made in 1163-65. and preserved intact, bringing to us the mosaics of the Basilian monk Pantaleone with the image of the Tree of Life, scenes from the Old Testament and the Gospel, military campaigns and gladiatorial fights. The frescoes are executed not so gracefully, but powerfully and sincerely, they could well be the envy of a modern artist of naive art.

Secondly, the cathedral contains the relics of the Holy Martyrs, who were executed by the Turks after refusing to convert to Islam. The relics are kept in a separate chapel, which is opened during the service.

Crypt, Eggenburg, Austria

The remains of 5,800 people are on display here. The crypt was sharpened at the beginning of the 14th century.

San Bernardino alle Ossa, Milan, Italy. This crypt dates back to 1210, a time when the nearby hospital cemetery was overcrowded. The crypt was built to store bones. The church was annexed to the crypt in 1269, but was burned in 1712. In 1776, a larger church was built on the same site.

Church of Saint Maria de Wamba, Valladolid, Spain

A small, seemingly unremarkable chapel in the middle of a cemetery on the outskirts of the city of Kutna Hora. The place is called Sedlec.

2.

Formally, the Gothic chapel is called the Church of All Saints, but everyone knows it exclusively as an ossuary.

A small panorama. In the corners of the chapel, behind bars, there are four pyramids of bones. A huge chandelier hangs from the middle of the nave. There are garlands of skulls around. This is a really strange place.

5.

To begin with, according to tradition, the history of the place in two paragraphs. In 1278, a certain abbot Henry went to Jerusalem. He brought a handful of earth from Golgotha ​​and scattered it over the cemetery. This land immediately began to be considered holy and every respectable person wanted to be buried in it. Rumors quickly spread throughout neighboring regions, and soon residents of almost all of Central Europe dreamed of resting in this cemetery. The plague and constant wars took their toll - there was not enough room for everyone. In 1400 they found a way out - a cathedral with a tomb was built in the cemetery. The bones from the old graves were moved there, and new dead people began to be buried in the ground.

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Such structures were par for the course in medieval Europe. When the cemetery ran out of space, the monks simply dug up the bones and threw them into the deep cellars of the chapels. In Sedlec, the ossuary was watched over by a half-blind monk, apparently with oddities. One day he stopped throwing bones into the basement - why waste them - and began laying out pyramids and all sorts of figures from them. According to the plan, all this was supposed to symbolize the resurrection. The brothers did not appreciate the creation and closed the creepy chapel. They remembered her only three hundred years later. Then the emperor closed the abbey and sold the monastery lands to the Schwarzenberg family - the largest landowners in Bohemia.

8.

9.

The Count liked the idea. In 1870 he asked local woodcarver František Rint to create something Gothic. He put the pile of bones in order - bleached, sorted and created a work of art from them. He covered the walls and vaults with skulls, hung bones from the ceiling, and created a family coat of arms and a chandelier. It uses absolutely all human bones.

The Schwarzenberg family coat of arms is another creation of Frantisek Rint.

12.

At the bottom right of the coat of arms is a Turk whose eye is pecked out by a raven. Adolf von Schwarzenberg commanded a regiment of imperial troops in the war with the Turks and in 1599 was awarded the title of count for the liberation of the Hungarian fortress of Győr.

13.

Signature of the master himself.
14.

About 40 thousand human skeletons were used to decorate the chapel. A whole small city. By the way, half as many people live in Kutna Hora itself.

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The rich were buried whole. The interior was created from the remains of the poor and unknown wanderers. Siedlce Cemetery is a place where miracles are expected. Everyone buried here was sure that they would be resurrected. The logic is simple - the abbot brought the soil from the place where Jesus was crucified. Jesus put an end to death. To be near the holy land means to be closer to Jesus, and, accordingly, to salvation.

17.

This is one of the few ossuaries preserved in Europe. The Vatican has long insisted on closing the ossuary, but UNESCO and common sense are winning so far.

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Everyone considers it their duty to throw a coin into the skull for good luck. Hit the eye socket - well done.

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Chilling beauty.

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Happy upcoming Halloween) To be honest, I didn’t plan to post a post specifically for this day, it just coincided so well.

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Literally opposite the chapel is the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It looks pompous, but no one goes there, everyone wants to go to the ossuary.

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And, by the way, one of the oldest abbeys in the whole Czech Republic.

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For those who missed my first photo report from the Czech Republic. Olomouc is a city founded by Caesar. In my opinion, this is the most underrated Czech city among our tourists. And completely in vain. There is something to see and where to walk.