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Sedlec Ossuary (Kostnice v Sedlci)

quirkyhistoryphoto spotchurch
Sedlec Ossuary (Kostnice v Sedlci)
Pudelek (Marcin Szala) · CC BY-SA 4.0

The graveyard became so famous as holy ground in the 13th century that people across Europe asked to be buried here — leaving 40,000+ skeletons that a 19th-century woodcarver was hired to arrange into the chapel's decorations.

An hour east of Prague by train, in the silver-mining UNESCO town of Kutná Hora. The bones came from a 14th-century plague pit; a half-blind monk arranged them in the 1500s and a woodcarver finished the job in 1870. Tiny, intense, and unlike anything else on the trip. Book a timed slot online — same-day weekend tickets routinely sell out. Note that photography is no longer permitted inside the ossuary. Pair with St. Barbara's Cathedral in the upper town.