Prague Bone Church

The bone church, or chapel of All Saints, is a ossuary (a place where bones are stored) in Sedlec, a neighbourhood of Kutna Hora in the Czech Republic, about an hour from Prague. Notice in the above picture that there are scull and cross bones on the steeples instead of crosses.

When Henry the Abbot was sent to the Holy Land in 1278, he returned with some soil from Golgotha and sprinkled it all over the graveyard. So it became the in place to be buried, add to that the mass of bodies accumulated during the various wars and the Black Plague and the number of bones grew. Around 1400 the church was built in the graveyard, and the ossuary underneath it. In 1511 the bones were exhumed and a half-blind monk was given the job of stacking the bones. Then in 1870 Frantisek Rint was asked to put the bones in order by the Schwarzenberg family. I suppose he got bored and decided to get creative, after all he now had the bones of 40,000 bodies to store. The above bone arrangement is of the Schwarzenburg coat of arms.

There are information pages in about 8 languages, and entrance will cost you 50 CZK and another 30 CZK if you want to take photos. You can also get a joint ticket to the large church just down the road.

On either side of the entrance are mounds of sculls which reach the ceiling.

You won’t be disappointed in a visit to the Bone Church!

To get there take a train from the Prague main train station to Kutna Hora, and it is a short walk from the station.