Summary:

For anyone interested in the Czech Republic, in art and history, this informative article introduces a gallery of sculptures made of human skeletons. The reader will learn how the Sedlec Ossuary came to be, what the sculptures look like, why the bones were made into art, how to get there, and why to go.

Details or Sample:

The Skeletons of Sedlec
(Kutna Hora, Czech Republic.)

by Helen Paris Riemer

It’s the skulls you see first as you stand on the stairs. Human skulls at the tips of the up curving arms of the chandelier, poised high on platter-like collars of overlapping hip bones. Dropping from each in a swooping arc, back and up to a central column, a line of ulnas hang bleached and straight, on a rope of vertebrae, like fringe. The central column itself is composed of sacrum, patella, and radii, decorative chains of mandibles help distribute the weight. This chandelier contains every bone in the human body, at least once And it is beautiful.

Welcome to the Sedlec ossuary, 70 kilometers southeast of Prague, in the Czech Republic, less than two hours by bus or train from that city. The town of Sedlec is a suburb of Kutna Hora, which, during the middle ages, was the richest and most powerful town in the Czech lands. This trip can be done in a day, start out in the morning to Kutna Hora, visit the gothic church of Santa Barbara, squeeze down into the silver mine at Hadrek for an claustrophobic, bone-crushing, underground tour, and make your way to Sedlec and its amazing ossuary.
In fact, you can see the ossuary first, as the train from Prague stops just a couple of blocks away.

Make no mistake about it, the Ossuary in Sedlec is an art gallery. It elicits the same reverent tones from the visitors, the same openmouthed awe, the same studying with subdued voices, the same desire to touch, knowing one shouldn’t. But even more; it elicits the sense of being in a place of wonder.

An ossuary is a boneyard, a storage place for human bones...

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