Monday, April 05, 2010

Sedlec - Czech Republic








The Place: Close to Kutna Hora, and an hour and a half outside of Prague lies the tiny town of Sedlec.
The Feature: Sedlec is known for its Ossuary, a chapel decorated using thousands of human skeletons. The story behind it is that one of the abbots was sent to Palestine in 1278. He brought back with him 'holy' soil from Golgotha and placed it in the cemetery. Believing that the soil was blessed it became a popular burial ground for europeans and was enlarged through the burial of over 30000 people. Between 1400 and 1500 a new church was built on the spot and the bones were dug up and kept. Much later, around 1870, a woodcarver was commissioned to put the heaps of bones in some order and resulted in him making artworks including a chandelier containing all the types of bones of the human body, big cups made out of skulls and bones, a coat of arms including a persons eye being pecked out by a rook, and in all four corners of the chapel tall pyramids of human bones bound together loosely.

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