Tourists taking in the view of the Sedlec Ossuary
The first thing I saw walking up to Bone Church, or Sedlec Ossuary, was a graveyard right outside the church. I have never seen a graveyard right on the grounds of a church, but it tells the history of the Ossuary. In 1278, King Otakar II of Bohemia sent a Father to the Holy Land, and when he returned, he brought back dirt from Golgotha, the site attributed to the crucifixion of Jesus, and sprinkled it on the cemetery. It then became a popular burial spot in Central Europe. During the Black Death and the Hessian Wars, in the 14th and 15th centuries, thousands of people were buried here. A Gothic Church was built here in the 14th century and its lower level, the ossuary, was used to stack bones to make room for new bodies being buried. In 1870, Frantisek Rint was hired to arrange these bones, and the result can be seen today inside the tiny ossuary. The bones are arranged artistically throughout the chapel, including a chandelier, which boasts having every single bone of the human body. Heaps of bones are stacked on every corner of the ossuary and they resemble tiny houses, other works include a coat of arms, and Rint’s signature made out of bones. It is estimated that the ossuary contains as many 40,000 to 70,000 bodies. It is truly a memorable place, although it is also tiny. Seeing that many number of bones stacked up and arranged in an artistic way was truly creepy and a little bizarre. Sedlec Ossuary is located in the suburb of Kutna Hora, Czech Republic and is an hour away from Prague by train. I recommend this trip to anyone traveling to Prague as it very memorable and affordable. Tickets roundtrip on the train for a group of six were only 107 crowns a piece ($6) and the entrance to the bone church was only 20 crowns for students (about a dollar!).
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