Dig up her bones

I have been planning to visit Kutna Hora as long as I have been here. The city is quite near to Prague, it only takes an hour in train to reach it. The old town of Kutna Hora is listed as Unesco World Heritage site. There are massive and impressive cathedrals in the city but probably the most interesting and unique place is the Sedlec ossuary, or the Bone Church.

Saint Barbara's Cathedral was build to show the wealth of the city

I decided to opt for a guided tour in Kutna Hora through meet up. Somehow I feel that trying to do sight-seeing independently always fails. Either I don't even know what to look for or get lost on the way and end up seeing nothing much. I wanted to be sure to see all the interesting spots in Kutna Hora without the fear of missing out on something. Tours also offer an easy way to see places, I didn't need to worry about buying the tickets or spend an hour contemplating which restaurant would be the best for lunch. Quite possibly I will participate in some other tours in Czech Republic later this summer. Anyway, let us return to Kutna Hora.

View of the city 

The city was established around silver mines that made it so wealthy that it even competed for the title of capital city for some time. However, a silver mine doesn't produce silver forever and when the all the silver was gone, the city lost some of its importance and became an ordinary city the biggest employers of which are a tobacco factory and most likely tourism.

Honey, I want to redecorate the house, what about a bone chandelier in the living room?

Saint Barbara's Cathedral and the Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady and John the Baptist are worth seeing but the main attraction is surely the ossuary. The ossuary is a relatively small chapel surrounded by a cemetery. The cemetery served as the final resting place of victims of epidemic plague and Hussite Wars. When the construction of the chapel began, some old mass graves were exhumed in the process.

This far our story remains normal. After all, it is not at all rare to find an old cemetery under a construction site. However, that is where this story gets a bit twisted when someone got a strange idea of re-purposing these bones that had been accidentally unearthed again as building material for the new chapel. So the project got named "the respectful memorial of the dear departed victims of wars and plague" or something in that vein to make it sound legitimate and the bones were arranged into huge. landslide-like piles, chandeliers and so on. The chapel is disgusting, shocking, unique, interesting, strange and probably that is why people flock there. I feel like a certain about of dark humor was in the air when the bones were being arranged. And think about it, if your job feels unpleasant from time to time, it's nothing in comparison to the job of the poor monk who had the task of decorating the church with bones.

There was a small food festival on Saturday, too, and we had lunch there. After lunch we walked around the city a bit. The weather is already relatively warm during daytime, so all in all the trip was a very interesting experience, one of the best days in Czech Republic this far. I recommend a trip to Kutna Hora in case you are heading to Prague. Hopefully there is no other such bone church anywhere else. And moreover, if you thought afterlife might get boring, worry no more. You never know when your bones will get dug up and put on display. The Egyptian mummies probably never imagined they'd leave Egypt thousands of years later and tour the world. Some of them are now in Prague, I guess I will have to go and see them.