A small cemetery chapel in Kutná Hora whose lower chamber is decorated with the bones of tens of thousands of people. Chandeliers, pyramids, coats of arms and garlands, all made of skulls and femurs.
The Cemetery Church of All Saints in Sedlec stands over a former burial ground that grew after a 13th-century monk supposedly sprinkled the soil with earth from the Holy Land. Later plague and war filled the cemetery. In the 16th century bones were stacked in the crypt; in 1870 František Rint arranged them into the famous decorative scheme for the Schwarzenberg family. The result is one of Europe’s most extreme sacred interiors Four bone pyramids occupy the corners. A chandelier of skulls hangs from the vault. The Schwarzenberg coat of arms is also worked in bone.
The upper church is quieter and more conventional; the ossuary below is the liminal heart of the site: an unsettling threshold between prayer, death and display. There is a sense of being watched by the many empty sockets lining the walls, as well as a surreal sensation that one my actually be inside a nightmare.
Photo credits: “DSC07851-Bone Church” by Lyn Gateley, CC BY 2.0 , “DSC07866-Bone Church” by Lyn Gateley, CC BY 2.0 , “Sedlec Ossuary” by Milan Boers, CC BY 2.0 , “DSC07864-Bone Church” by Lyn Gateley, CC BY 2.0 , “Sedlec_Ossuary_2024-07-05 11.44.33” by dlovins99, Public Domain Dedication (CC0)
