Sedlec Ossuary: A Day Trip to the Bone Church from Prague

Hi friends! This post first went up in August 2013, when my son wrote about his trip to Praha (Prague) with his dad. One stop stood out above everything else for him: the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutná Hora, a small chapel decorated with the bones of tens of thousands of people.

Since then, taking photos inside the ossuary has been banned, so pictures like these are hard to find today.

Back then, my little man wanted to write about the trip himself, and his words are still the best part of this post. I miss those days. So here he goes, in his 11-year-old voice:

Hello to all of my mom’s readers out there in the blogosphere. I’m the little man of the house, and I want to show you some of my favorite places that we went to in Praha. It was also cool to go and visit the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutná Hora with my dad.

(I stayed behind with our daughter because all the sightseeing and walking was still too much for her. So this is their story and their photos.)

What is the Sedlec Ossuary?

The Sedlec Ossuary is a small chapel below the Cemetery Church of All Saints in Sedlec, a part of Kutná Hora about 80 km (50 miles) east of Prague. Most people know it as the bone church.

My son researched the history of the ossuary himself for his 2013 post. Here’s what he found:

In 1278, Henry, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec, was sent to the Holy Land by King Otakar II of Bohemia. He brought back a little earth from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the cemetery. Word spread, and Sedlec became one of the most wanted burial places in Central Europe.

During the plague in the 14th century and the Hussite Wars in the 15th century, thousands more were buried here, and the cemetery ran out of room. After 1511, a half-blind monk was given the job of moving the old bones into the chapel and stacking them.

In 1870, a local woodcarver named František Rint was hired to bring order to the piles of bones. What he made is what you see today: a chandelier, a coat of arms, chalices, and garlands, all made of bones. He even signed his name in bones.

Is the Sedlec Ossuary scary?

A lot of people expect the ossuary to be creepy, but it isn’t really a place to be scared in. It’s a church, and the bones belong to people who were buried in the cemetery here over the centuries.

For a long time, and in many cultures and beliefs, people lived much closer to death than we do now. Keeping the bones of the dead in a chapel was a respectful way to keep them on sacred ground. The Catacombs in Paris, the Capuchin Crypt in Rome, and the Chapel of Bones in Évora, Portugal, all show how common it once was to keep and even decorate the bones of the dead.

Growing up in Germany, I was used to crypts and burial places in churches and castles. The dead were always part of these places, so the ossuary doesn’t feel as strange to me as it might to someone seeing something like this for the first time.

Instead of hiding the bones away, they tried to make something beautiful. Our son saw that right away, and he still cherishes that visit today.

Inside the bone church

It’s quite dark inside the chapel, so give your eyes a moment. Then you start to notice that almost everything around you is made of bones.

The bone chandelier

The chandelier in the middle of the chapel is the most famous piece. It is said to contain every bone of the human body at least once.

Look closely, and you can see how it’s built. Each candle sits on a skull with crossed bones; the arms rest on pelvic bones, and the curved garlands between them are strings of jawbones.

Around the chandelier stand tall candelabras covered in skulls, each with a gilded angel on top blowing a trumpet. In church art, the trumpet stands for the Last Judgment, when the dead are called to rise.

Skull garlands and decorations

Garlands of skulls hang from the vaulted ceiling, and a fringe of long bones runs along the arches.

Above one arch is a cross made of bones and skulls, with a sunburst of bones around it. On the walls, you’ll find chalices, a skull-lined balcony, and small arrangements of skulls and bones in the corners of the arches.

The Schwarzenberg coat of arms

The Schwarzenberg family owned the land when Rint did his work, and he made their coat of arms entirely of bones, crown and all.

In the lower corner is a raven made of bones pecking at a skull. It comes from the family’s coat of arms and refers to a family member’s victory over the Ottomans in the late 1500s.

The bone pyramids

In the corners of the chapel are huge pyramids of stacked skulls and bones, behind wooden frames and wire grates. A carved, gilded crown sits on top.

In front of one pyramid, skulls are lined up on a wooden ledge, and visitors have left coins between them. I loved this photo so much that I turned it into a skull printable for my DIY Halloween gallery wall that you can download in that blog post.

Visiting the bone church with kids

Here is another one of his original quotes as an 11-year-old boy:

“It was the scariest, and also the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!”

And today he says: It was definitely the most impressive and weird thing I have ever seen.

If your kids like history or a bit of a spooky story, they will probably love it. It’s a church, so it’s quiet inside and nothing can be touched.

Can you take photos inside the Sedlec Ossuary?

Not anymore. After some visitors posed with skulls and even took bones, the parish began restricting photography in 2019, and today, taking photos inside the ossuary is not allowed. Please check the official Sedlec website for the current rules before you go.

All the photos in this post were taken in 2013, before the ban.

The ossuary is still a sacred place with an altar and a crucifix, so a quiet and respectful visit is part of the experience.

How to get from Prague to Kutná Hora

They took the train from Praha hlavní nádraží, Prague’s main station, to Kutná Hora. The ride takes about an hour.

If you take the train, Kutná Hora’s main station (Kutná Hora hl. n.) is in Sedlec, within walking distance of the ossuary. The old town with St. Barbara’s Church is a few kilometers away, so plan a short bus or train ride, or a longer walk to get there.

The ossuary itself is small and doesn’t take too long to tour; of course, you can take your time to look at everything. So the time you spend inside depends on you.

Tickets and opening hours

Prices and hours change, so check the official Sedlec website for current details. A few things that help with planning:

• Combined ticket: the Sedlec ticket covers the ossuary and the Cathedral of the Assumption, a short walk away. There have also been tickets that include St. Barbara’s Church.
• Two different big churches: the Cathedral of the Assumption is in Sedlec next to the ossuary. St. Barbara’s Church (often called St. Barbara’s Cathedral) is in the old town, a few kilometers away. Don’t mix them up.
• Busy months: in summer and on weekends it can get crowded, so booking ahead online is a good idea.

While you’re in Kutná Hora

Kutná Hora is more than the bone church. In the Middle Ages, silver mining made it one of the richest towns in Bohemia, and you can still see that wealth in its churches and houses. The old town, together with St. Barbara’s Church and the Cathedral of the Assumption in Sedlec, is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The old town is a few kilometers from the ossuary, and walking through it, with its cobblestone lanes and pastel houses, was a nice change after the dark chapel.

St. Barbara’s Church, with its three tent-shaped roofs, sits high above a vineyard next to the long white Jesuit College. It’s the classic view of the town. St. Barbara is the patron saint of miners, which fits a town built on silver.

In the center, cafés with red umbrellas fill the square, with the tower of St. James Church rising behind the rooftops.

St. James is one of the oldest churches in Kutná Hora, and its tall stone tower is easy to spot from almost anywhere in town.

Not far away stands a baroque Marian column from the early 1700s, covered in carved saints and angels.

Our son had his camera with him the whole time.

Our home base: Praha

In our family, we call it Praha, the way the Czechs do. My son never liked that the English language changes a lot of city names. Praha was their base for the trip. We have so many photos of Praha, but I can’t share them all here since this post is about the ossuary! That’s something for another post. Here are just a few of my son’s favorites, in his own words.

“Prague Castle (Praha Castle) was HUGE, so huge that it is the biggest castle on earth according to Guinness World Records.”

“This is Golden Lane (that’s where all the workers lived) in Praha castle. It was my favorite part of the day, and at night it was the ‘Ghost & Legends Tour’, where they tell you scary legends while on tour. I love stories!”

In Praha my dad and I had many good dishes (mostly Czech specialties) that I have never tried before:

• 1st day lunch was pork, dumplings, and sauerkraut in a gravy at U Dvou Sester (ONE OF THE BEST MEALS EVER!)
• 2nd day lunch at the Medieval Tavern “U Krále Brabantského” and had two smoked sausages (BEST SAUSAGES EVER!)
• 3rd day dinner was at Kotleta and I ate duck leg with dumplings in a gravy (BEST DINNER EVER! Ok I loved it all and can’t really make up my mind)

“This was on Charles Bridge, and we saw an amazing double rainbow. Charles Bridge was really nice; it is similar to the one in Würzburg but better.”

Have you been to the Sedlec Ossuary, or would you go? Let me know in the comments.

Tschüß,