If you’re looking for a spooky and fascinating destination for your next trip, you might want to consider visiting the Sedlec Ossuary, also known as the Bone Church, in the Czech Republic. This unique chapel is decorated with the bones of more than 40,000 human skeletons, arranged in various artistic and macabre ways. In this blog post, I’ll give you a detailed history and highlights of this remarkable place, and why you should add it to your bucket list.
The story of the Sedlec Ossuary begins in the 13th century, when a monk from the local Cistercian monastery brought back some soil from Jerusalem, which was considered the Holy Land. He sprinkled the soil over the cemetery of the monastery, making it a very desirable burial place for people from all over Europe. The cemetery soon became overcrowded, especially after the Black Death and the Hussite Wars in the 14th and 15th centuries, which claimed thousands of lives.
In the 15th century, a Gothic church was built on the site, with a lower chapel that was used as an ossuary to store the bones of the exhumed graves. The bones remained there for centuries, until 1870, when a woodcarver named František Rint was hired by the Schwarzenberg family, who owned the land, to arrange the bones in a more aesthetically pleasing way. Rint used his creativity and skill to create various sculptures and ornaments from the bones, such as a chandelier that contains at least one of every bone in the human body, a coat of arms of the Schwarzenberg family, and four enormous pyramids of skulls.
The Sedlec Ossuary is open to the public and attracts more than 200,000 visitors every year. It is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Czech Republic, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Some people might find it creepy or morbid, but others might see it as a beautiful and respectful tribute to the dead. Either way, it is a unique and unforgettable experience that you won’t find anywhere else in the world.
