Ossuary of Sedlec, bone church in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic

Another dispatch from Philip: "there is that famous bone church just outside Prague... that would be cool to go to..."

Yup. The Ossuary of Sedlec, in Kutná Hora, an hour east of Prague.

The short version is that a thirteenth-century abbot came back from Jerusalem with a jar of soil from Golgotha and scattered it on the cemetery, which made it the place half of Central Europe wanted to be buried. Plague and the Hussite wars filled it well past capacity. In 1870 a woodcarver named František Rint was hired to do something with the bones of somewhere between forty and seventy thousand people, and what he did was arrange them: a chandelier using every bone in the human body, four bell-shaped mounds, the Schwarzenberg coat of arms, and his own signature on the wall in finger bones.

Two things have changed since Philip suggested it, and both matter before you go. Photography inside has been banned outright since the first day of 2020, on the grounds that it is a grave rather than a set. And entry now runs on timed slots booked ahead, with about thirty minutes in the lower chapel, so turning up on spec on a summer afternoon is how you miss it.

Book and check the current rules at sedlec.info. Go, though. Photograph or not, it is not like anywhere else.

Posted 16 April 2003 by Ant in Czech Republic, Eurail Blog Archives, BootsnAll Travel Community · updated by Chris