Sedlec Ossuary, Kutná Hora

Nestled in the quaint city of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic, the Sedlec Ossuary stands as a unique monument to the inevitability of death and the artistic handling of human remains. This small Roman Catholic chapel, situated beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints, is renowned for its unusual and macabre interior decoration: the bones of between 40,000 to 70,000 people, artistically arranged to form furnishings and sculptures.

The history of Sedlec Ossuary dates back to the 13th century when the abbot of the Sedlec monastery returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with a handful of earth and sprinkled it over the cemetery surrounding the chapel. This act made the cemetery a highly desirable burial site throughout Central Europe. In the 15th century, a Gothic church was built near the cemetery and its basement was used to store the exhumed bones from abolished graves, a result of the cemetery running out of space.

The task of arranging the bones decoratively was given to a woodcarver named František Rint in 1870. His macabre creativity led to the creation of chandeliers, altars, and coats of arms made entirely of human bones, along with a signature of the artist himself, also in bone. The most striking piece is the chandelier containing at least one of every human bone, located in the center of the nave of the chapel.

The Sedlec Ossuary is a sobering reminder of the transitory nature of human life and the equality of people in death. It is a site of pilgrimage not only for those interested in its historical and religious significance but also for visitors fascinated by the more unusual and eerie aspects of human culture.