Friday, April 27, 2012

The Bone Church

The Bone Church may have been one of my (ashleigh) very favorite things about our entire trip! I was so looking forward to this day and visiting this church and it did not disappoint me. I'm sure I'll mess up the details of this but here are some of the more interesting facts about this place

1. It is an actual working church/cemetery even to this day called Church of all Saints
2. It's not made UP of bones but merely DECORATED with 40,000 human bones (in the basement)
3. It's in a town called Kutna Hora 
4. The basement is called an Ossuary which I'm pretty sure means "bone holder"
5. A lot of the bodies came from the Hussite War and the Black Plague
6. THe legend goes that dirt was taken both from Golgotha and the field that Judas bought/hung himself in and brought to this space. So, if you're buried here, your body decays in 3 days. 
7. The bones were originally decorated by a monk that got creative and after World War 2 - I think that's the one with Hitler- and all of the bombings, someone was commissioned to reassemble the bones in the 70's.



The view as you walk into the basement. 


I was SO excited to be here!




THATS A LOT OF BONES!!  There were 4 big stacks like this in the 4 corners of the room. 



These skulls have injuries from the Hussite War. 




We decided these cherub guys were far more creepy than the bones!

This chandelier has every bone in the human body in it!



This crest was amazing! They had a picture of the actual crest beside it and the artist did a great job depicting all the parts. The detail is amazing!




Look at that bird pecking the guys eyes out!  Yet another reason to not like birds :)

Listening to the audio guide

These are skulls/bones with malformations. Eyes too big or small, abnormally large heads, etc. 


or they could be bowling balls :)







It was so cold in here we could see our breath!  and the ladies behind us were southern women from America. A refreshing change to hear :)



2 comments:

Elizabeth Bradley said...

I'm glad you took a picture of (and posted) the tombstone with the steering wheel. :) And I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that you shared so many of these photos seeing as how it was one of your favorite places. Still, that's a lot of pictures of bones. The chandelier is definitely my favorite... with the crest being second. So glad we experienced yet another "first" here with you guys.

The Lourceys said...

This is really, really weird. I just can't believe those are real people's bones!