Kutna Hora, Czech Republic

Ever since I found out about Kutna Hora, I’ve been really eager to visit it. To be honest, part of the reason I chose to travel to Prague was because Kutna Hora is only a 1 hour train ride away, just the right distance for a day trip.

Why was I so interested in visiting Kutna Hora? Well, there is a pretty unique church there…

It’s called the Sedlec Ossuary and it’s filled with the bones of between 40,000 and 70,000 people!

There has been a cemetery on this site since before the 13th century. Eventually a tiny church was built beside it, and through the centuries, the cemetery began to fill up. They were simply running out of space to bury people. So, about 500 years ago, a half-blind monk started arranging the bones into amazingly intricate decorations.

Have you ever seen a coat of arms quite like that?

Below is a chandelier that includes every single bone in the human body. It’s huge and very impressive.

There are also stacks and stacks of bones that weren’t arranged in any special way. They just had so many bones!

It was very quiet and pretty dark inside the small church. I wouldn’t call it morbid, death is just a natural part of life. It’s definitely fascinating, though. I wonder what people thought of it 500 years ago, when society’s ideas about science and religion were quite different.