Czech Republic's Bone Church

On our drive to Prague, we made a stop at Czech Republic's Bone church. It was a quick stop, but was one that was on our list from the beginning.

Since coming to Europe, we have seen a lot of churches, and I mean a lot. Every place we have visited has at least one big cathedral, and we have visited them all. Even though they all have their unique aspects, they are all the same idea for the most part.

As you can imagine, this church was pretty different from the rest. As odd as it seemed, it was exciting to go to a church that was completely unique, but still had a rich history.

The bone church, actually named the Sedlec Ossuary, is a quite small, Roman Catholic chapel that is under The Cemetery Church of all saints. What's incredible about the chapel is that it contains bones from 40,000-70,000 different human skeletons.

When the church was built around 1400, it was built in the middle of a cemetery. The Ossuary (under the church) was built to house the bones discovered from the mass graves that were found when they were building.

Later, a half-blind monk was given the job of organizing and stacking the bones. After a few hundred years, a woodcarver was hired to put the piles of bones into order.

The bones are used to create several designs, including a chandelier that hangs in the centre that is comprised of at least one of every bone in the human body.

The chandelier was definitely what catches your eye the most, but there were also designs like the picture above, and a coat of arms that you can see behind me in the picture below.

By the entrance of the church, you can see the signature of the woodworker who created the designs in 1870, and as you can expect, it's also made of bone.

For those of you that think we're crazy to think this is cool, keep in mind over 200,000 people visit every year, so we're not the only ones, haha. Don't get me wrong, it was extremely eerie knowing you're surrounded by real skeletons and they aren't just leftover from past Halloween's. But how often can we say we visited a church of bones?!

The church of bones probably isn't in itself worthy of a trip to the Czech Republic, but if you're already visiting Prague, its definitely worth a day trip.

+Kahli