Archive for October 15, 2009

Prague to-do: Sedlec Ossuary

This is my 'I'm-not-leaving-Prague-until-I've-seen-the-Sedlec-Ossuary-face'. Deal with it. It's a Roman Catholic Chapel with a story to tell, and with the bones of over 40,000 people decorating the interior of the ossuary, it's not something we're going to miss. 

Wikipedia tells us that it is in Sedlec [pronounced sed-letz], a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. The bones used to decorate the interior come from 40,000 – 70,000 different people – all whom died in the six-hundred years that preceded the innovative interior décor constructed by 19th century woodcarver František Rint. [sidenote: š is pronounced sh as in shell or Frantishek] These people were buried here because Sedlec was a highly-desirable burial site (thanks to the actions of an abbot many years prior), and the large number is due, in part, to the casualties of the Black Death and the Hussite Wars. More pictures here: http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-skeleton-church.html. Read the Wikipedia entry, if you are interested, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary. Here is an absolutely hideous About.com review that says it isn't worth visiting: http://goeasteurope.about.com/od/czechrepublic/fr/sedlecossuaryreview.htm. Morons. 

In December the Church/Ossuary is open from 9am until 4pm, although it closes for lunch (13.00 – 14.00). It is not open on the 24th and 25th of December. It costs 50Kč pp to enter (approximately £2.00), and you pay an additional 30Kč for photographs. Kutná Hora is an hour's train ride out of Prague and the Church is within walking distance of the train stop. Work it into the itinerary! 

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