The Bone Church, or the "The Sedlec Ossuary," had its beginnings in the 13th century when an abbott of the Sedlec monastery went to Palestine and brought back some soil from the Holy Land. He sprinkled this soil all around the cemetery that surrounded the Chapel of All Saints. Because of this link to the Holy Land, the graveyard became a much sought after burial site for Central Europe's aristocrats. By the 17th century, the cemetery was overflowing, so the older remains were removed and stored inside the chapel. Today the bones of nearly 40,000 people are inside this small church.
Now, Laurel & I had already seen something like this when we were in Paris and visited the Catacombs. Other than the fact that the Paris catacombs hold the bones of millions of people while the Bone Church holds only thousands, the main difference between the two is that the Bone Church is literally decorated with bones, in addition to housing piles of bones for storage purposes. These decorations were made by a woodcarver named Frantisek Rint. He was commissioned to decorate the chapel with the bones in 1870.
It was unlike anything any of us had ever seen, and I couldn't help but wonder whose bones were now part of these chandeliers and ornate displays!
This is part of the cemetery outside the church where the soil from the Holy Land was scattered.
Honestly, I just don't even know what to say about this place other than that it was definitely very interesting, a little bit creepy, and something we'll never forget seeing. After we had sufficiently taken it all in, we drove back to a regular church called St. Barbara's that we had seen on the way into town that morning. The church had immediately caught our eyes with its flying buttresses as we had driven uphill toward the city of Kutna Hora.
St. Barbara's Church is a Roman Catholic church and is one of the most famous Gothic style churches in Central Europe. Construction on the church began in 1388, but wasn't completed until 1905. Talk about a church building project going on forever! The construction paid off because the church's exterior architecture is just incredible.
The interior was equally beautiful with all the things I love about old churches - stained glass windows, lovely frescoes, and a beautiful pipe organ.
I love the intricate woodwork on the pews.
I also love these two kids right here!
Now for the boot on my car part of the story...
When we arrived at the church, I had parallel parked on the road in front of the church right behind a string of other cars. We didn't see any sort of sign telling us not to park there, not did we see any sort of tickets displayed in any of the windows of the cars that were already parked there. We assumed all was well, but we were quite wrong. As we walked back to the car after visiting the church, we turned the corner to see a police officer putting a boot on one of my wheels. Naturally I started to freak out because, hello, we were in the Czech Republic! I would have a hard enough time navigating such a situation in Germany where I know a little bit of the language, but figuring it out in the Czech Republic was a whole other ball game! Thankfully my husband knows how to keep calm in these situations, so he politely went up to the officer and asked him what we needed to do to get the boot taken off the car. I'm assuming the officer spoke no English and had no desire to try to communicate with us because he just went to his car, got the key to unlock the boot, removed it from the car, and ushered us away. Whew!! So a word to the wise - the Czech Republic is serious about parking violations. They skip the warnings and the tickets and go straight to putting your car on lockdown. Seriously serious, y'all!!
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