3/ Ossuary in Sedlec

Only a few of those who visit Kutná Hora, actually Sedlec - to be precise - know that the official name of the ossuary is the Church of All Saints, and the ossuary is just a part of it. This cemetery church originally belonged to the local Cistercian monastery, and it is said that the local abbot, Heidenreich, brought a handful of earth from the Holy Sepulchre from his journey to Jerusalem and then scattered it over the cemetery. This made the soil in the cemetery part of the Holy Land, and it is said that the bodies crumbled to dust within a few days, and many people, not only from Bohemia but also from neighbouring countries, wished to be buried there. Thirty thousand people who died during the plague and about 10 thousand people who died during the Hussite wars also found their final resting place here.

The construction of this two-storey cemetery church, with a mortuary on the lower floor and a chapel on the upper floor, began in the early 14th century. In 1421 the chapel was burnt down by the Hussites. When the large local cemetery was abolished at the end of the 15th century, the exhumed bones were kept inside and outside the underground part of the church. Here, in 1511, a blind monk stacked them into 6 large pyramids, and it is said that he regained his sight after that.

In 1784, Joseph II issued a decree abolishing monasteries that were not hospital or did not provide education, and so the local Cistercian monastery, to which the Church of All Saints belongs, was also abolished. The property formerly belonging to the monastery was bought by the Schwarzenbergs of Orlik, who have had the ossuary remodelled into its present form. František Rint, a carver from Česká Skalice, then created a unique decoration of human bones for them.

However, the bizarre interior decoration is the reason why this place is visited by around 400,000 visitors from all over the world every year. As mentioned above, a blind monk from the Sedlec monastery first cleaned the skulls of the local dead and arranged them into 6 pyramids. When Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel came to Sedlec to renovate the Cathedral in Sedlec in the early 18th century, he used 2 of these pyramids to decorate the interior. But the most important decoration is the work of the Schwarzenbergs' master builder, František Rint, whose name, dated 1870, is found on the wall in the ossuary. He first disinfected and bleached the bones with chlorine lime and then created this unique decoration, which includes the Schwarzenberg family coat of arms, cups, and garlands. All of this made, how else than from human bones. The eye of every visitor for sure catches the central giant chandelier; it is said it is made of all the bones that can be found in the human body.

But in all this spectacle should not be lost the original meaning of it all. And that is MEMENTO MORI or remember death.