The story goes that in 1278 an abbot came back from the Holy Land with jar full of soil and sprinkled it over the cemetery of the abbey. This being sacred soil everyone wanted to be buried there, and a lot of people with money or connections were. And then more were buried after the Black Death and even more after the Hussite Wars. So many dead that the cemetery had to be converted into an ossuary to fit all of the dead, which meant digging up the graves and moving their bones into a room beneath the soil and the newly built church. And so the Sedlec Ossuary came to be. But the most interesting part comes 480 years after the ossuary was created, when in 1870 a woodcarver named FrantiĊĦek Rint was tasked by the Schwarzenberg family (an aristocratic family who oversaw the region) to decorate the chapel with bones...and this is the result.
He made pyramids.
He made garlands.
He made a chandelier out of (at least one of) every human bone.
He made the Schwarzenberg family coat of arms.
He even signed his name with bones.
While we were there they were doing some restoration on the ossuary and church. The structure of is in need of some repairs and so to do this they will be having to figure out how these bones are assembled, take them apart, fix the damaged structure and then somehow reassemble the bones.
Here's an excellent video by Atlas Obscura's explaining it all better than I:
The ossuary and chapel really aren't that large, but I cannot recommend going here enough - it's something that you won't forget. So when you find yourself in Prague (and you should try to find yourself there at some point) then go see this. From Prague just take the train to Kutna Hora hl.n. (it's about an hour and there are numerous trains a day) and from the station it's only a 10 minute walk.
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