Kutna Hora: The Bone Church City

Today I took a day trip to Kutna Hora, best known for its Bone Cathedral.

Kutna Hora is a small town that was known for its silver mining industry during the 1400's.  Currently, it is still a small town where local Czech's spend their time running tourist services to the thee UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Bone Church, the oldest cathedral in Central Europe, and its preserved 1400 silver mining museum.  However, this post will only focus on the Bone Church, due to time constraints there were only a couple things my traveling companions and I could view.

The Bone Church looks pretty inconspicuous.

However, the inside is much more interesting!

 

The initials of the original monk who created the odd art pieces.

The Bone Church was the result of an overcrowded graveyard and the manifestation of devout religious beliefs.  During the crusades, places consecrated with soil from the Holy Land became extensions of the Holy Land and thus held a special place in the minds of the devout.  The Bone Church was consecrated in this manner and soon rumors started to swirl about the speedy decomposition of the bodies buried near in the Bone Church graveyard.  It was said the bodies buried in the graveyard took three days to decompose and leave blanched bones.  Due to these two reasons, people from all over the region wanted their final resting place to be the Bone Church.

It was also during this time that both the Hussite Wars and the Black Death occurred, creating a large amount of remains near the Bone Church.  In order to alleviate this problem, the Bone Church priests started to exhume the bodies of the dead.  The bones were cleaned, blanched, and placed in huge large pyramid altars in the basement of the church.  In this manner, the collection of bones underneath the church were symbolic of the underworld.  As more bodies were exhumed the bone creations became more elaborate; chandeliers, candle stands, and the regional crest were created from human remains.  In addition, they added crowns above the bone pyramid altars to represent the goal of every devout Christian: reach heaven.  An interesting fact about the Bone Church: all structures were completely constructed from human remains except for the crest, there is one complete set of Raven remains.

One of four bone pyramids erected in the ossuary of the Bone Church.

An elaborate crest made of human remains and one raven.  Can you spot the raven remains in this picture?

After concluding the visit to the Bone Church, a long walk to the middle of town yielded a less traveled tourist route. The sleepy town of Kutna Hora had winding cobblestone streets that spilled out into traditional European plazas.  Overall I found the locals to be very friendly and pleasant, especially when you attempted to use short Czech phrases.

Not everything in Kutna Hora is as sinister looking as the Bone Church.

We stumbled upon an active movie set.  I guess they were in between takes.

The extras were super friendly and allowed us to take some pictures during their down time.

A view of the quiet town of Kutna Hora.

The trip to Kutna Hora is definitely worth the visit for someone looking to get away from the busy tourist sections of Prague. Tomorrow I head to Munich, the heart of Bavaria.