June 10, 2002 - Kutna Hora

Kutna Hora is a small town about 70km east of Prague.  I went there with Jamie and Sarah, a British couple that were staying in the same hostel room as me.  The main point of attraction for us was the Sedlec Ossuary.  In the 13th century, the abbot of the monastery in Sedlec was sent by the Czech king on a mission to Jerusalem, and he returned with a handful of earth from Golgotha, which he sprinkled on his monastery's graveyard.  This made the cemetery a popular burial site for nobility all over Central Europe.  As a result, a huge number of bones accumulated. A half blind priest began to make sculptures and ornaments from the bones.  The most notable are the bells (they actually look more like giant pyramids) in each corner and the chandelier that includes every bone in the human body.  The ossuary contains the bones of about 40,000 people.

A cute green house near the Sedlec Ossuary

The entrance to the Ossuary

A bone chalice

Decorative ceiling work

One of the "bells"...each bone in there is a femur

The chandelier made from every bone in the human body...granted, it took a quite a few human bodies to make this thing

Some sort of angel

A coat of arms

A display of skulls

The base of one of the "bells"

The archway leading out of the Ossuary

A closer view of the bones decorating the archway

The Lord of the Dead!!

The Church of St. Jacob

An interesting building we saw in our wanderings

The Italian Court...where they used to have the Czech Mint in the medieval times

The Hradek church

The doors to the Hradek Church

As big as the St. Barbara Cathedral is, we sure had a hard time finding it

A medieval pathway leading through town

The St. Barbara Cathedral

I read at one point that the St. Barbara Cathedral is the second largest cathedral in the world but I'm having trouble substantiating that now

A building on the grounds of the cathedral

The west side of the cathedral

Gothic spires decorating the cathedral

The main entrance to the cathedral...we couldn't go through it as everything in the Czech Republic seems to be closed on Mondays

Me near the wall around the cathedral

The countryside surrounding Kutna Hora as seen from the cathedral grounds

The St. Barbara cathedral grounds

A very tight spiral staircase

The town of Kutna Hora

Jamie is getting way into his photography