Sedlec Ossuary: Bones, History, and the Edges of Taste

In 1870, a local woodcarver named Frantisek Rint was commissioned to arrange the human bones stored in the crypt of a Gothic church in Sedlec, on the edge of Kutna Hora in the Czech Republic. He made chandeliers from them. He made a coat of arms for the Schwarzenberg family. He made garlands for the pillars. And in the corner, he signed his work in bones, leaving his own name as the final element of a tableau made entirely from the remains of 40,000 people.

That signature is the detail that tells you everything about the place. The bones came from plague victims and Hussite war casualties buried in the cemetery here during the 14th and 15th centuries, when the grounds ran out of room and the bones were moved to the crypt. Rint was not arranging them to mock the dead; decorating a charnel house with bones was not an unprecedented practice in medieval Catholic art. But the scale and the craftsman’s signature create something that reads differently to modern visitors.

Getting There

Sedlec Ossuary sits 1.5km northeast of Kutna Hora’s main train station. The walk takes 20 minutes; follow signs for “kostnice.” From Prague, Kutna Hora is an 80-minute train ride on a direct regional service from Hlavni Nadrazi, running hourly, around 120 CZK each way.

Opening hours: 09:00-18:00 April through October, 09:00-17:00 November through March. Entry 120 CZK adults (card payments accepted). Allow 30-45 minutes inside. Photography is permitted; tripods are not.

What to See

The ossuary is small and the installations are close enough to examine in detail. The Schwarzenberg coat of arms incorporates a skeletal hand holding a crown over a defeated Turk. The chandelier is constructed from every bone in the human body. Rint’s work is macabre in concept and oddly refined in execution.

The adjoining All Saints Cathedral is usually overlooked by visitors. It shouldn’t be: the upper church is a beautiful Baroque building with good painted decoration, included in the ossuary ticket.

Kutna Hora

No one should come only for the ossuary and leave. Kutna Hora is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with a genuinely impressive old town that most day-trippers from Prague miss.

St. Barbara’s Cathedral is the centrepiece, late Gothic with flying buttresses, construction started 1388 and not completed until 1905. The interior frescoes in the miners’ chapel show 15th-century silver miners at work, one of the few visual records of this industry in Central Europe.

Pivnice Dacicky on Rakova serves traditional Czech food in a vaulted 15th-century cellar. Mains 180-280 CZK. Reliable.

Practical Notes

Midweek visits are significantly less crowded than weekends from May through September. Queue at the ossuary on a Tuesday morning: under 15 minutes. On a Saturday afternoon: 45-60 minutes. The church is an active Catholic site; 40,000 people are buried here. Behave accordingly.