Macabre

The Middle Ages have been dark times but the 19th century is a lot more creepy. An ossuary is situated in Sedlec – a suburb to Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. The ossuary belongs to the cemetery church of All Saints. The small roman catholic chapel contains skeletons up to 70,000 people.

After 1278 the site became a hot spot for burials, because abbot Henry of the Cistercian monastery  enhanced the value of the cemetery. He brought back a strange souvenir from the Holy Land: earth from Golgotha! He sprinkled it all over the cemetery. It became a good „fertilizer“, because many rich people wanted to be buried there. Plague and wars added another amount of dead bodies. The cemetery and the monastery became richer as rich – not only by bodies.

When the Gothic church (1400) was built, tons of bones came to light again. They were collected and displayed in the ossuary.

In 1870 the most remains were again artistically arranged by František Rint – an employee of the noble House of Schwarzenberg. He systematically sorted the bone heaps – at least he disinfected and bleached the bones during his unhealthy work. A good quantity of the bones were arranged as furniture or chandeliers and even as a gigantic coats of arms by Rint.

I’m an archaeologist and I dug up enough dead bodies – most of them at least 100 years dead and not all of them were skeletons – but this is  disgusting and the most creepiest place.

Nevertheless it’s art, history, a listed monument and a interesting place worth to visit.