The first was the Sedlec Ossuary
In the 15th century when plague and war was causing serious life-span issues in Europe, the monks of this church found themselves with a serious oversupply of bones, and not enough cemetery to house them all. The solution was found in a somewhat surprising field, that of interior decoration. The bones of 40,000 people are housed in this Ossuary and arranged into massive self supporting pyramids. In 1870 all of the bones were bleached and re-arranged by a Czech woodcarver named Rint.
Here we have the coat of arms of the Schwarzenberg family, in the background there is one of the four massive piles of bones in the ossuary. If you look closely at the lower right hand corner of the shield you will see a bone bird picking the eye from a skull. Reading the information sheet picked up from the front of the church, I learnt that this arrangement of bones was supposed to remind us all of the temporal nature of our earthly lives, and the fact that all people living or dead will face the final judgment. It did not mention anything about the apparent insanity of the people who thought to construct this place. Bones were cut in half and sawed into shapes for aesthetic reasons, and Master Rint even signed his name in bones at the entrance to the Ossuary.
Hanging from the roof in the centre of the ossury is a bone chandelier, seen in the centre of this picture. It contains at least one of every bone in the human body. I was interested to know if it also had the hammer and anvil bones of the ear, however I could not seem to locate them at the time.
The other reason I went to Kutna Hora was that it has a medieval silver mine, and I had heard that you get down with some urbex 13th century style.
The first time I was in Kutna Hora it was too late in the afternoon and the silver mine was closed. Luckily for me I managed to score a ride with some Americans (with a car) from Prague to Cesky Krumlov a couple of days later. They wanted to check out the bone church so we went through Kuta Hora and the silver mine was open. After a rundown on the mine and medievel mining technology we donned old school miners outfits, with hats and lamps and descended (with a tour guide) into the mine. The mine was active from the 13th to the 18th centuries, and the guide quoted me a rather large amount of silver that had been removed over the years, however I can't remember what it was. The mine was great, we walked a few hundred meters of tunnels that twisted and bent to follow the vein of silver. The guide mentioned there were hundreds of kilometers of tunnels under town, I wished I had time to find a way into some of them.
Another interesting thing about the town was that the houses are three stories above and three levels of cellars below the ground. The old miner who was our tour guide told me that this produced the most optimum beer temprature.
At the moment I am in Berlin, however tomorrow morning I fly to London where I will stay a number of weeks before flying back to Shanghai. When I return to Shanghai I will finally have time and computing power to regale you all with tales, anecdotes and photographs.
