Prague POD: August 19

In September, Dave and I are going on a 2-week holiday to Prague. I’m going to eat a dumpling (and a strudel), wear a black leather jacket, and walk on cobblestones. I’ve been asked so many times, “Why Prague?” that I’ve decided to show you.

It’s the Prague Photo of the Day (POD).

The Sedlec Ossuary is a small Roman Catholic chapel in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora, about an hour on the train from Prague. Word is the ossuary contains the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people.

In 1278 King Otakar II of Bohemia sent Henry, the abbot of Sedlec, on a diplomatic mission to the Holy Land. When Henry was leaving Jerusalem, he grabbed a handful of earth which he sprinkled over the cemetery back in Sedlec. Thanks to this holy dirt, the cemetery became famous throughout Central Europe – the Forest Lawn of the Middle Ages. During the 14th century, the cemetery expanded to accommodate Black Death victims and its population soared to around 38,000.

After 1400, one of the abbots built a chapel in the cemetery for the bones of abolished graves. The bones were originally just piled into pyramids, but then the Schwarzenberg family hired Czech woodcarver František Rint, in 1870, to  apply his creativity to the arrangement of the bones.

The chandelier in the center of the nave contains all the bones of the human body, looping chains of bone are draped from the vaulted ceiling, and Master Rint even built a coat of arms to honor the Schwarzenberg family.