Sedlec Cemetery
A chapel where the bones of thousands are arranged into art.
Sedlec Cemetery is a burial ground located in the suburb of Sedlec, part of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. It is part of the former Sedlec Abbey and sits beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints. The site contains an ossuary estimated to hold the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, whose bones have been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel. The ossuary is among the most visited tourist attractions in the Czech Republic, drawing over 200,000 visitors annually.
Quick Facts
- Location
- Sedlec
- Region
- Bohemia (Central)
- Type
- Cemetery and Chapel
Lore & Background
In 1278, Henry, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec, was sent to the Holy Land by King Ottokar II of Bohemia. He returned with a small amount of earth he had removed from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the abbey cemetery. The word of this pious act soon spread, and the cemetery in Sedlec became a desirable burial site throughout Central Europe. In the mid 14th century, during the Black Death and after the Hussite Wars in the early 15th century, many thousands were buried in the abbey cemetery, so it had to be greatly enlarged. Around 1400, a Gothic church was built in the center of the cemetery with a vaulted upper level and a lower chapel to be used as an ossuary for the mass graves unearthed during construction. After 1511, the task of exhuming skeletons and stacking their bones in the chapel was given to a half-blind monk of the order according to a legend. Between 1703 and 1710, a new entrance was constructed to support the front wall, and the upper chapel was rebuilt in the Czech Baroque style, designed by Jan Santini Aichel. In 1870, František Rint, a woodcarver, was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to put the bone heaps into order, yielding a macabre result. His signature, also executed in bone, appears on the wall near the entrance.
Reader's Guide
The Sedlec Ossuary is located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints, part of the former Sedlec Abbey in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. It is among the most visited tourist attractions of the Czech Republic, drawing over 200,000 visitors annually. Visitors can see four bell-shaped mounds of bones in the corners of the chapel, a chandelier containing at least one of every bone in the human body, garlands of skulls draping the vault, piers and monstrances flanking the altar, a coat of arms of the House of Schwarzenberg, and František Rint's signature in bone near the entrance. The ossuary is open to the public and offers a unique, macabre experience of medieval and Baroque religious art.
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