The Bone Church and Kutna Hora

Day 4 in Prague

Today we ventured back across the Charles Bridge and met up with a group for a tour of Kutna Hora which is in central Bohemia, about an hour outside of Prague. 

We boarded a train and our first stop was to see the Bone Church in a small village just outside of Kutna Hora.  The Bone Church (Sedlec Ossuary) is located in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutna Hora. It is a small Roman Catholic chapel located beneath the Church of All Saints Cemetery. The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, whose bones have, in many cases, been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel.

In the 13th century, Jindřich, the abbot of the Sedlec monastery, returned from a visit to Palestine with a jar of soil from the Holy Land and sprinkled it on the cemetery grounds surrounding the Chapel of All Saints. 

This direct association with the holy land led to the graveyard becoming a sought after burial site among the aristocracy of Central Europe. At the time of the thirty years’ war in the 17th century, the number of burials outgrew the space available. To make room, the older remains began to be exhumed and stored in the chapel in pyramids.

In 1870, the Schwarzenberg family who owned the land, commissioned Frantisek Rint to decorate the chapel with the bones and create a reminder of the impermanence of human life and inescapable death.

The Human bones are arranged as strings of skulls and bones hanging from the ceiling, a skull candelabra, chalices, piles and piles of bones behind fencing and a display case showing skulls with wounds inflicted by various Medievalk weapons.  There is a huge display of bones in the shape of the  Schwarzenberg family crest. 

The most prominent display (which had been taken down while we were there for maintenance), is a chandelier that contains at least one of every bone in the human body.

Over 200,000 people visit the Bone Church annually.  The church itself is actually sinking and needs to be repaired.  Once the repairs are made visitors will no longer be able to take pictures inside the church.  While the Bone Church may sound macabre it really wasn't.

After seeing the Bone Church, we traveled a short distance by tram to Kutna Hora.  Kutna Hora, which stands for "Mining the Mountains" is a medieval mining town founded in the 13th century. Later on it became one of the richest sources of silver in Europe and also the second most important town of the Bohemian Kingdom.  While it ran out of silver in the 19th century, it has kept the character of a medieval town and is one of the most important UNESCO heritage sites in the Czech Republic. During WWII, Germany mined the same area for zinc. 

With the wealth from the mines, St. Barbara's Church was built  in the town beginning in 1388.

Saint Barbara's Church, a Roman Catholic Church is one of the most famous Gothic churches in central Europe.  St. Barbara is the patron saint of miners which is fitting for this area known for its history with silver mines. 

On our walk back to our hotel from the train station, we stopped at the Black Angels Bar in the heart of Old Prague to give our feet a rest and to have a cocktail.  It is listed as the number 1 international hotel bar for cocktails in the world so we had to give it a try. We forgot however that bars in Europe still allow smoking and in this particular bar expensive cigars were being purchased and smoked.  We did not stay long!