Bone house

Bone house is a building or certain site which includes human skeletal remains. They are often created in places where there is lack of space. A body is first buried in a temporary grave. After a few years skull and bones are removed to a bone house. The word "ossuary" is also used for similar places.

Several places with the bone houses exist in Europe. Let’s start with the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic. It is a small Roman Catholic chapel, located underneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints (in Czech - Hřbitovní kostel Všech Svatých) in Sedlec. Sedlec is a suburb of a city Kutná Hora in central part the Czech Republic. This bone house includes about 40,000-70,000 human skeletons. It is not only the pure number of skeletons which makes the place rather creepy. There is more. These skeletons are arranged in a very special way.

The history of the place starts in 1278. King Otakar of Bohemia sent Henry, the abbot of local Cistercian monastery founded in 1142, to the Holy Land. From his pilgrimage Henry brought little bit of soil he found on the place of Golgotha. He sprinkled the soil over the abbey cemetery. This fact was quite attractive to people. Everyone wanted to be buried there. Thousands of people, who died during the Black Death of the 14th century and the "Hussite wars" in the early 15th century, were buried at the cemetery. Around 1400 a Gothic church was built in the center of cemetery. To make place for new burials bones were excavated and put inside this church.

Sedlec Ossuary, detail

In 1870 local woodcarver František Rint was employed by the rich Schwarzenberg family to put the bones into order. He did a fascinating work. He created the huge candelier which includes at least one of all human bones. Other object made out of bones by František Rint are piers and monstrances flanking the altar, a big Schwarzenberg coat-of-arms, and the signature of Rint.

Sedlec Ossuary, detail

For the next of European bone houses let’s move to Austria. Hallstatt, Upper Austria is a village located the Salzkammergut region. The word hall in the name of this place is probably of Celtic origin and means salt. Salt mining was very important for the village and whole region.

Beinhaus (Bone house) in Hallstatt

What made this village famous is the "Beinhaus" - Bone house. It includes over 1200 skulls. The oldest are from the 12th century. The last skull put there was the one in 1995. 610 skulls have flowery designs painted on them. This tradition started in 1720.

Next of European bone houses is in Italy. Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, or Our Lady of the Conception of the Capuchins, is a church in Rome built in between 1626 and 1631. The church is has 6 parts – Mass chapel, Crypt of resurrection, Crypt of the skulls, Crypt of the pelvises, Crypt of the leg bones and thigh bones and Crypt of the three skeletons. The Mass chapel is the only part of church without bones as the mass is celebrated there.

Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini

The crypts contain bones of 4,000 friars buried between 1500 and 1870. Some skeletons are still in the Franciscan habits. Very interesting text can be seen in one of the chapels – “What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be". The crypt and its bones were inspiration for some writers who visited this place. Marquis de Sade visited the crypts in 1775. He wrote in his Voyage d’Italie “I have never seen anything more striking”. Mark Twain visited this bone house in summer of 1867. He dedicated five pages of his “The Innocents Abroad” to this fascinating church.