Macabre Art

One hour from Prague is Sedlec, a suburb of Kutna Hora where the Church of All Saints is located.

With Halloween approaching, macabre art is on my mind. The Czech Sedlec Ossuary began around 1400 to house an overabundance of buried bodies.

An ossuary is a final resting place for human skeletal remains and becomes a necessity when burial space is scarce.

It is estimated that the bones of 40-70 thousand people are in the basement ossuary.

The bubonic plague and later Hussite Wars provided the bodies that now decorate the church. Wood carver and artist, Frantisek Rint designed how the bones would be placed.

This chandelier contains every bone in the human body. You can look at this as macabre, but there is beauty and symmetry in the designs Rint created. I think I would rather have my remains used in this way than to take up space in the ground!

 Thanks to the Berger Foundation for the endless files of photos of art around the world.