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The Czech Republic’s Church of Bones

Where art meets the macbre.

sedlec exterior.jpg

This week I present yet another travel destination for those that enjoy their vacations with a slightly morbid touch. This time around, it’s the Sedlec Ossuary, also known as the Church of Bones, a unique Roman Catholic church located in Sedlec, the Czech Republic. About an hour outside of the capital of Prague, this strange and interesting church is decorated with the remains of more than 40,000 human beings.

As the story goes, in 1278 a certain abbot was assigned to this church and when he came he brought with him a jar of soil that he had acquired in Jerusalem. He sprinkled it in the cemetery and afterwards people, seeing the ground as more holy with the addition of the soil, desired to be buried there. The influx of the dead caused the cemetery grounds to be expanded until, in the 15^th century, a Gothic church was built nearby, the basement of it used as an ossuary. This quickly filled with even more remains. In 1870, a man was hired to get all those remains in some sort of order. His solution was to bleach the bones and turn them into artworks, crowning his creation with a signature made from the very same remains.

From outside, the church looks fairly ordinary, but once you reach its interior, it’s a very different story. The bones were turned into a variety of decorative fixtures, including a giant bone chandelier at the church’s center, an old coat of arms, over-sized bone chalices, bone candelabras and candleholders and several other works. The entire thing transformed the interior of the chapel into something very macabre and at the same time very intriguing.

Whether you enjoy these sorts of sites or not, the Sedlec Ossuary possesses a uniqueness that is unmatched elsewhere in the world. It’s a great site to add to any touring list. For a nice collection of photos of the Church of Bones, check out this site.