Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, and how about 70 kilometers east the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague, lies a small town called Sedlec. It might have been an ordinary enough town, if not for its extraordinary chaple.The inside of this chaple is decorated with artworks made of real human b0nes. The story begins in 1218, when a certain Abbot Henry made a pilgrimage to the h0ly land and brought back a jar full of soil from cemetery, which he spread over the Chaple. As a result the chaple came to be regarded as more sacred and turned into a popular burial spot.By 1318, more than 30,000 b0dies were buried there and by 1511, it had become necessary to remove the older b0nes to make place for the new ones. These later became the material for the mac@bre creations.In 1870 a local woodcarver was hired by the Duke of Shwartzenberg to decorate the inside of the chaple with the human remains (approximately 40,000 sets of human b0nes). Now it is one of the most extraordinary church in the whole world.... Boney Chaple - isn't it morbidly amazing???
Attached are some of the pictures of this Boney Church - its simply astonishing.
Sunday I took the train to Kutna Hora. This was an extraordinarily rich silver and copper mine during the middle ages but most people know it today for the Sedlec Ossuary. In the 1800s a bone filled chapel was redecorated by a local woodworker using what was handy - the bones of some 40,000 individuals stacked up in the small building. For 30 Kc extra visitors are allowed to take pictures. I paid my due and snapped away. The result can be seen in my Sedlec photos. Honestly I was expecting it to be larger but it was still impressive in it's variety.
The rest of the town was interesting too: Kutna Hora. Highlights included the Cathedral and the Silver Mine Museum. That last one had authentic artifacts, many full sized recreations of differnet machines related to medieval mining and minting of silver, and lastly a lamp and helmet tour of 400 meters of 500 year old mine passage below the city. That is old enough that some interesting cave formations have formed in some areas. I had a lunch of wild boar and local dark beer in a traditional Bohemian beer hall for around $8.
One more thing. When I first arrived at the train station I met a pair of cousins from Barcelona. What a relief to get to talk Spanish instead of choking out a little Czech. They were surprised and happy with that too because they had been having to communicate with everyone in the little bit of English that they knew. Throughout the day we kept bumping into each other and ended up on the same very late and overfilled train back to Prague where I read a few more chapters in my book in French. That isn't bad. Some degree of successful communication in four different languages in one day.
