Sedlec Ossuary/ The Bone Church (1870)
The cemetery at Sedlec Monastery in the (now) Czech Republic was one of the most desired burial spots in the region for centuries, as the 13th century Abbott of Sedlec Monastery had scattered holy soil he had acquired in Jerusalem over the land. But by the 1870s, space had run out. Bodies were compacted into a crypt to make space. In 1870, local woodcarver František Rint came up with a way to manage the roughly 40,000 skeletal human remains at the site. He created a chapel using the hand-bleached bones as artistic material. He crafted candelabras, chalices, bone swags hanging decoratively from the ceiling, monstrances, chandeliers, and even a family’s coat of arms out of the bones, ensuring the remains would stay on the sacred land without overcrowding the space. While the idea of human remains being used as decoration may seem creepy, it is a place of peaceful reflection.
