Christmas in Prague: Sedlec Ossuary

Hello, hello! It's been a long time, I know. But we've been busy packing up home in Edinburgh, travelling around Europe and Asia and (finally) returning home to Oz.

Anyway, here are the last photos from our Christmas trip last year to Prague. They are photos taken from our trip to Kutna Hora and are of the amazing Sedlec Ossuary. It was very macabre!

The All Saint's Chapel (Sedlec Ossuary) is part of an old Cistercian Monastery dating from around 1142. After the plague struck, thousands of victims were buried in the Chapel plots, however even more bones began to pile up inside the Chapel, making it an Ossuary.

The Schwarzenberg family purchased Sedlec Monastery in 1870 and employed a local woodcarver (Frantisek Rint) to use the bones for creative decoration of the Chapel. Rint made a chandelier, which contains at least one of each bone in the human boday as well as numerous other bone crosses and wall decorations. Four giant pyramids of stacked bones are in each corner of the chapel and there is even a Schwarzenberg coat of arms made from bones!

View of Chapel entrance from inside -




Main chandelier -









David and Lauris under the chandelier -



Elsa and Chris under the chandelier -




Gruesome wall decorations -








One of four giant pyramids of stacked bones situated in each corner of the chapel -






Schwarzenberg family Coat of Arms -