After spending about an hour on the train from Prague, with a change in the town of Kolin, I arrived (having spent the first part of my trip sharing a coach with an old lady who repeatedly hoicked, spat and spewed into her handkerchief).
Armed with a trusty, hand-written map from the hostel I eventually found the Ossuary which was an impressive sight to behold.
The history behind it is that once upon a time it was just your usual chapel, until someone brought some soil back from the Holy Land and sprinkled it around the graveyard. Suddenly everyone wanted to be buried there and so the graveyard filled up, and fast (from memory, the Plague didn't help matters). At this point a monk was in residence and he decided to start exhuming the skeletal remains (to make more room for newly dead people) and stacking the bones in the chapel crypt. Needless to say he was a bit loopy. Many years later we have the tourist attraction that houses the bones of an estimated tens of thousands of people and an incredible bone chandelier made from every bone in the human body.
After the Ossuary, I decided to walk up the hill to the old town of Kutna Hora which used to be quite wealthy on account of silver mines in the area. It was beautiful though a bit sleepy, and after half a day I was ready to head home.
To sum up the day trip is to quote a fellow guest at the hostel who commented that it is a long way to go for a 10 minute attraction. That said, I thought it was totally worth it as there is only one such Bone Chapel that I know of in the world.
What follows is a photo essay of some of the more interesting sights.
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| Another Church in Kutna Hora |
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| Plague Memorial |
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| View from Old Town hill |
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| Kutna Hora Street |
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| Communist-era Apartment Block |
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