In the heart of the Czech region of Bohemia is Sedlec, a suburb of Kutna Hora, a town that prospered since iron mining began in the 1300s. Henry, the Abbot of the town’s Cistercian abbey, returned from a trip to the Holy Land with a handful of earth from Jerusalem. Being sprinkled with soil from the holy land, the graveyard at Sedlec became the place to be buried. Coupled with the Hussite Wars and plague, there was no shortage of recently deceased needing burial space.
Successive redevelopments of the church and an overcrowded graveyard meant graves were cleared and bones put into the ‘ossuary’, a chapel for bones. After the church was acquired by a wealthy family, the Schwarzenburgs, the Sedlec ossuary became a chapel where human remains have been transformed into art and architecture.
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| Arriving early at Sedlec ossuary |
Today the ossuary is open to view. Arriving there you’re struck by how normal the church is, knowing the grotesque displays in its basement. Walking round the graveyard outside is more eerie than being inside as lights shine against grimy windows casting shadows and firing up your imagination. Inside, the ossuary is much smaller than expected, and thanks to a lady clunking a heavy stamp onto entrance tickets, is less creepy than you’d expect, there are no dark corners to find yourself isolated in. That said I wouldn’t fancy being there overnight!
Believing skeletal remains reminded the living of their inevitable death and judgement for their actions in life, the Schwarzenburgs stacked over 40,000 bones into four piles that symbolise the bells that would toll on the day of judgement. The more ‘decorative’ elements such as the chandelier, with every bone of the human body represented, were added after then and look so absolutely, completely unreal that it’s actually really very difficult to take in what’s around you. Perhaps being conditioned by Indiana Jones or the Lord of the Rings makes it difficult to appreciate how monstrous the surroundings are.
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| Grotesque chandalier with every bone in the human body represented |
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| Bell shaped pile of c10,000 bones |
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| Cherub wuth human skull perched on its knee |
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| c5ft tall chalice ornament |
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| Stacked bones and skulls |
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| Stacked bones, behind steel as they're loosely stacked so one nudge could send the pile falling |
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| Ornamental skull on a pillar |
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| Schwarzenburg coat of arms |
There’s no reason to stay too long, the ossuary is really just one room and once you acclimatise to it, it’s time to move on. I haven’t seen the episode for a while, but getting back on my bike outside was strange knowing the Ewan McGregor / Charlie Bowman Long Way Round team had been in that exact place before. This is the only place my trip will overlap with their adventures, which makes plain how different place are when you travel in real life as opposed to seeing them on TV. I thought it was a creepy chapel in the back of beyond, but really it’s just down a side street in quite a busy little town with touristy infrastructure all around by way of cafe’s and gift shops.
After only an hour or so, it was time to move onto Ceske Budejovice, home for the next two nights.
2 comments:
Good description :) I've just read about Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's impressions on that chapel. I visited that place some years ago, too.
By the way, I reckon this place could have been kind of inspiration for Tim's Burton Corpse Bride, what do you think?
Ah, I wish I'd looked back at their book to see what they thought - I remember the images from the TV show, but not really their thoughts on it. I could well have been, but I think the inside of Tim Burton's head is far stranger than this place!
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