Church of Human Bones

Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014--Day Trip to Kutna Hora

We escaped the crowds of Prague today to take a side trip to Kutna Hora, about 1 hour away by train.  It's a city that was once rich due to silver mining, and it has two main tourist attractions--its churches and its old town.

We stopped first at Sedic Ossuary.  It's a former monastery where the bones of 40,000 people who died centuries ago were stored in the crypt.  The family who bought the building allowed a local woodcarver to start arranging the bones in creative ways.  The crypt is now a major tourist attraction with pyramids of skulls, garlands of skulls and femurs, a chandelier made of bones which includes at least one of each bone in a body, etc.  It's a unique place.

There are two old churches in the city that are World Heritage Sites.  We visited Katedrala Nanebevzeti Panny Marie near the Ossuary first.  It is a rather simple looking church, but our tickets allowed us not only to see the sanctuary, but to also walk through the roof level and see the construction without the use of metal nails. 

The Old Town in Kutna Hora is very quaint.  It seems like a small village with very narrow cobblestone streets and views looking out over vineyards, monasteries, etc.  It has many nice buildings due to the fact that the town was rich from its silver mining. 

At the end of the old town, we came to Chram sv. Barbory, the other church that is on the World Heritage List.  It is a beautiful structure with intricately carved flying buttresses.  It is one of the few churches I have seen that is original.  Construction began in the 1300s, and was continued for hundreds of years with long interruptions.  But it has never burned and has never been remodeled into a newer, trendier style like most old churches have been.

Returning to Prague, we headed to the Letenske sady, an open-air beer garden consisting of many picnic-style tables arranged under the branches of large trees in the park of the same name that we visited yesterday.  It's on a hill with a view across the river and over the old center of Prague.  We drank beers and ordered sausages with mustard and bread to eat.  It was a great evening with cool air.  Many people were there just visiting with friends and enjoying the summer weather.