Sedlec ossuary

The Sedlec ossuary is a small Christian chapel, located in the graveyard of the Church of All Saints in Sedlec[?] a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. The ossuary is decorated with many thousands of human bones.

In the 13th century the Sedlec became a site of pilgrimage and many people brought their dead and dieing relatives to the town to be buried. During the Black Death many thousands of people were buried there and the graveyard filled to overflowing. The ossuary was built around 1511, and a monk, who was apparently half blind, was given the task making more room for bodies in the ground by removing skeletons from the graveyard and placing them in the ossuary thereby creating great pyramids of bones. In 1870, the Schwarzenberg family bought Sedlec monastery and employed a man by the name of Frantisek Rint to create the extraordinary decorations that can be seen today. These include the Schwarzenberg coat of arms, Rint's own signature, and a chandelier that is said to contain every single bone in the human body.

External Links

• Sedlec ossuary (http://www.ludd.luth.se/users/silver_p/kutna.html) - website with pictures