Place of the Month: Kutna Hora Church

If you think that you have seen everything in life . . . then wait. This place is probably not on the list of travelers who keep blessings of Google with them. The Sedlec Ossuary is nothing special outside, it’s just another ordinary chapel located in Sedlec, in suburbs of Kutna Hora, Czech Republic.

Once you enter the old chapel you’ll realize that you have come into the most bizarrely artistic place of the world which is decorated by more than 40,000 human skeletons. And thus, is also famous as ‘Church of Bones’ or ‘Bone Church’.

Here you’ll find hundreds of skulls smiling at you. This place is for those who are not afraid of dead, adventure lovers, history seekers and lovers of unusual places.

Its jaw dropping to see the big chandelier (which contains all types of bones of human body), pillars decorated with bones, even numbers are written using smallest of small human bones.

History

You may be in awe that how all these bones being craved in a small chapel situated in the Czech Republic. Turning the pages of history, during 1278, the King of Bohemia sent the abbot of the Sedlec Cistercian Monastery to Jerusalem. When the abbot returned back he brought a jar of soil from the Golgotha with him. This soil was known as the Holy Soil. Shortly, people from all the places wished to be buried in Sedlec, therefore the cemetery there had to be stretched.

In the 15th century, a Gothic church was constructed near the burial ground and its basement was used as an ossuary (a place where bones of dead people is kept). The bones stayed there carelessly for centuries till the year 1870 when a woodcarver Frantisek Rint was chosen to put the bones in arranged order. The result was remarkably shocking.

If you desire to visit this exceptional work of genius, you can travel to Prague; from there you have to have a one hour trip to Kutna Hora.

In conclusion, the Sedlec Ossuary may seem a gruesome place, but after visiting it, you will not find it to be scary, but serene. Those 40,000 people wished to be graved in a holy place, which brings them to Sedlec and now their bones are right in the heart of the chapel.