Kutna Hora - The Ossuary

Kutna Hora is south east of the city and we used our last day of the rail pass to go out and see this place. Kutna Hora is a medieval centre for silver mining and, in its day, was the second largest city in the Czech kingdom. Due to the number and conditions of various sites in the community, it was deemed a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.
First off the train, we walked over to a village named Sedlec where we visited the small Church of All Saints which is really nondescript compare to the amazing cathedrals in Europe but it has an attraction which none of the others had. It has an Ossuary which is entirely decorated with human bones. It is estimated that there may be remains of up to 40,000 people.
During the plague periods the dead exceeded the capacity of the small cemetery to handle so they were buried one on top of the other. Eventually, even this method exhausted the space so the bones were removed from the ground and placed in piles around the church. In the early 18th Century, the original Cistercian monastery and this chapel were renovated and the style was changed to the baroque style which still exists. In the 1870s, someone (his name is in the Ossuary spelled out in smaller bones) decided that it was disrespectful to leave these bones just lying about so he organized them into these fantastical structures.
Walking into the crypt, the first thing that hits you is the smell of mouldy decay and then you see the piles of white washed bones. Pictures are self explanatory.
The rest of our trip to Kutna Hora will be in the next blog.