The Church of Bones
Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. About 70 kilometers east of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, lies a small town called Sedlec. It might have been an ordinary enough town, if not for its extraordinary church. The inside of this church is decorated with artworks made of human bones. The story begins in 1218, when a certain Abbot Henry made a pilgrimage to the holy land and brought back a jar full of soil, which he spread over the Church's cemetery. As a result, the cemetery came to be regarded as sacred and turned into a popular burial spot. By 1318, more than 30,000 bodies were buried there and by 1511, it had become necessary to remove the older bones to make space for the new ones. These later became the material for the macabre creations. In 1870 a local woodcarver was hired by the Duke of Shwartzenberg to decorate the inside of the church with the human remains (approximately 40,000 sets of bones). Click on pictures for close-up view.
