The Bone Church

Just out of Kutna Hora is Sedlec and its infamous 'All Saints Cemetery Church'. The site of the church has been a place of pilgrimage since the C13th when the abbot returned from Jerusalem and scattered a handful of earth from 'the grave of the Lord'. During the plague 30,000 people were buried there and thousands more as a result of the Hussite battles around the town. The church was built at the end of the C14th. In 1511 the monks exhumed around 40,000 people and piled them into pyramids inside the church...and if you think that is macabre, you aint heard nothing yet...
When the Schwarzenbergs purchased the property in the 1870's they commissioned a wood carver to redecorate using the bones...pictures speak a thousand words...
Piece de resistance.. as you descend the stairs from the entrance you are confronted by the chandelier. The angled sides to the roof are open jaws, some still with teeth!

The goblets are inset into the walls of the stairs

The pyramids of bones are placed in the four corner chaples of the church, note the artist has signed his work to the right - 1870 J Rint z Ceske skole(from Czech school)

Bone Pyramid close up

NanJan wondering what to make of it all

Column under the chandelier....the cupids are a later addition