There is a church in the Czech Republic where the alters, chandaliers, bells and art are all made of Human bones. The Church is called the Sedlec Ossuary and the story behind it is a bit bizarre.

sedlac ossuary bone church

40,000 dead, the skulls and skeletons, centuries of war and plague victims, all form the morbid artwork that fills the church - Sedlec’s Church - All Saints ossuary in the Czech Republic. In 1511, the ossuary was created - a half-blind monk gathered the human bones of the black death victims, which were added to with victims from 15th century Hussite Wars. Frantisek Rint, wood carver and artist was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to imaginatively compose the bones into works of art; amongst his creations came the Schwarzenberg family’s coat of arms, and a chandelier containing every bone in the human body, composed of several bodies. In the four corners of the ossuary sit four ‘bells’, pile upon pile of bones carefully stacked with a hollowed center.

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From artagraphica, the explanation to this macabre holy ground.

In 1278 the Cistercian abbot of Sedlec, Henry, traveled to Palestine and the ‘Holy Land’, bringing home a sample of earth from Golgotha which was later, upon his return, sprinkled over the grounds of his local cemetery. The grounds were immediately considered scared, and hence became a much sought after location for relatives to bury their dead. In the 14th century, the Black Death spread the bubonic plague across Europe and now 30,000 bodies all wanted a resting place within the sacred grounds. Such vast numbers of dead led to the creation of the ossuary in 1511 by a half-blind monk who gathered up the bones to be stacked up within the ossuary, making space for new corpses, which were soon taken up by more victims from 15th century Hussite Wars. The ossuary itself is situated in the basement of the All Saint’s Chapel.

Sedlec is a suburb to Kutna Hora, a town in south Bohemia that once flourished due to its mined silver reserve. It is about an hour’s travel from Prague.

History of the Church from the church’s website:

A cistercian monastery was founded near here in the year 1142. One of the principal tasks of the monks was the cultivation of the grounds and lands around the monastery. In 1278 King Otakar II of Bohemia sent Henry, the abbot of Sedlec , on a diplomatic mission to the Holy Land. When leaving Jerusalem Henry took with him a handful of earth from Golgotha which he sprinkled over the cemetery of Sedlec monastery, consequently the cemetery became famous, not only in Bohemia but also throughout Central Europe and many wealthy people desired to be buried here.The burial ground was enlarged during the epidemics of plague in the 14 th century (e.g.in 1318 about 30 000 people were buried here) and also during the Hussite wars in first quarter of the 15 th. century.

After 1400 one of the abbots had a church of All -Saints erected in Gothic style in the middle of the cemetery and under it a chapel destined for the deposition of bones from abolished graves, a task which was begun by a half blind Cistercian monk after the year 1511. The charnel-house was remodelled in Czech Baroque style between 1703 - I710 by the famous Czech architect, of the Italian origin ,Jan Blažej SANTIM-Aichl. The present arrangement of the bones dates from 1870 and is the work of a Czech wood-carver, František RINT (you can see his name, put together from bones, on the right-hand wall over the last bench).
Our ossuary contains the remains of about 40 000 people. The largest collections of bones are arranged in the form of bells in the four corners of the chapel. When in Europe, you may visit the Sedlac Ossuary