The Ossuary of Sedlec and its decoration of bones

When in a place they fuse the ability of a woodcarver of wood, a macabre imagination and 40.000 corpses, the results can be horrific. A place thus exists, carries the peaceful name of Ossuary of Sedlec and is located exactly in Sedlec, suburb of Kutná Hour in the Czech Republic.


The espeluznante mega ossuary, that is also a Roman catholic chapel is found low meters land under the cemetery of the Church of All the Saints and is usual place of first curious visits and then frightened faces once in the interior, and perhaps of quickly flights. All was initiated in the century XIII when the abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Sedlec, Herny, travelled by assignment of the king Otakar II of Bohemia toward Holy Land in the year 1278.

In its stopover in Holy Land, Henry took advantage of to take land of the Mount Golgotha and carried it toward its city. Once there, spreaded the land along the cemetery. All the settlers wanted to be buried there where was widespread the holy land and that caused that itself to become one of the main cemeteries of Europe Central.



The Black Death and the Wars Husitas were the two historic events that contributed to the apilamiento massive of corpses in the Ossuary of Sedlec.

In the fifteenth century proceeded to expand it. For the year 1.400 was decided to build a church of Gothic style in the center of the cemetery. The church possessed two levels, the superior where the liturgical acts they would be carried out and the lower one that would be destined like ossuary of the human remainders that rested dispersed in a common grave. The work of exhumation was carried out the year 1.511; presumedly by a blind monk that swam between tepid and humeri. They passed some centuries and the bones continued stacked without no order and without knowing that to do with them.



1870 it was the year of birth of the macabre aspect that lights up currently, when the family Schwarzenberg hired to Frantisek Rit -woodcarver of wood- to give him a better aspect to the lower part of the chapel. Rit worked tirelessly day and night and many meters low land, until to the end concluded its work.

It used the bones as his main building material and thus I believe walls, an impressive spider and the shield of weapons of the family, every fact entirely of bones. In the vault of the lower chapel he embedded the other skulls and thus he remained completed his espeluznante work.

Currently he receives 150.000 people to the year and even some years ago they continued carrying out masses in their interior.