The Church Decorated with Bones
In a small chapel in Bohemia, the bones of tens of thousands of people have been arranged into garlands, a coat of arms, and a chandelier.
What was reported
Beneath a small Gothic church in Sedlec, on the edge of Kutná Hora, the bones of an estimated 40,000 to 70,000 people fill the ossuary. Legend says that in the 13th century an abbot brought back a handful of earth from Golgotha in Jerusalem and scattered it over the cemetery, making it a place where people across Central Europe wanted to be buried.
After plague and the Hussite Wars, the cemetery overflowed and bones were stacked in the chapel. In 1870, a woodcarver named František Rint was hired to arrange them. He made bells, garlands, a family coat of arms and a great chandelier that contains every bone in the human body, and he signed his name in bones.
Explanations offered
The ossuary is a real Catholic chapel and a reminder of the medieval idea of memento mori: remember that you will die. Ossuaries were common in Europe when cemeteries ran out of space. It's now one of the most visited sites in Czechia.
- When
- Bones arranged in 1870
- Where
- Sedlec, Kutná Hora, Czechia
- Witnesses
- Hundreds of thousands of visitors each year
- Status
- A real place
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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