The Sedlec Kostenlos: photo, reviews, address

Do you like horror movies? Do you want to get a powerful charge of adrenaline to goosebumps and hair stand on end? Then you just need to visit the Sedlec catastrophe. The photo of a chandelier hanging from the ceiling of the chapel is impressive. After all, this lamp is made entirely of human remains. The fringe of the phalanges of the fingers looks particularly gothic. In this article we will talk about the unusual sights of the Czech Republic. In Kutná Hora (there is a terrible chapel in its vicinity) organized excursions from Prague are sent. But you can see the landmark yourself, without contacting travel agencies. How? Read the information below.

The Siedlce Dam: how to get there

There are several options for an independent traveler. In Prague there is a bus station Florenc. Several times a day, cars leave for him to the town of Kutna Gora. There, right on the bus station, you should change to a minibus to Siedlec. It will not take long. After all, the Kutna Mountains from the Czech capital are separated by some sixty kilometers. And Sedlec is a suburb at all. Marshrutka gets there in ten minutes. The second option is a train. The trains to Kutny Mountains depart from Prague's main train station. The second option is preferable for those who want to explore this ancient town along the way. Kutny Mountains were once famous for their own mint and silver mines. The motorist needs to leave Prague on the E67 road. Then follow the sign to Colin. It is recommended to make a stop in this city to see the wonderful cathedral. Next, you need to follow highway 38. At the end of the road you will find a bones storage facility in Sedlec. The address of this landmark is: Zámecká, 284 03 Kutná Hora.

What is the ossuaries?

According to the church general Christian tradition, the land of the cemetery is considered sacred. According to the beliefs, when the Jericho trumpet announcing the End of the World and the Last Judgment will sound, the dead will rise from their graves. They will be a Christian community. Therefore, before the cemeteries were arranged near the churches. The situation was changed by the Great Plague and a series of subsequent fatal epidemics. The number of dead has increased many times. And the places in the cemetery were sorely lacking. The church canon did not give the right to burn the remains of exemplary Christians who died in union with the Church. Burials on top of old graves caused animals and rains to expose corpses - and this caused new epidemics. Thus, people came to the idea of ossuaries. The name comes from the Latin word ossis - "bone". Skeletons broke from the graves and were stored in special chapels. And their place was occupied by new dead men. Thus, the cave house in Sedlec is not something unique. The ossuaries exist in many countries, and the largest - six million skeletons - are stored in the catacombs of Paris.

What is unique about the Siedlcek ossuary

And yet Paris is known as the location of Notre Dame, the Louvre Museum and other attractions. A few people know that in the caves of the city there are several millions of remains (more than living Parisians). But Kutna Mountains, in addition to the glorious history of silver mines, has a rather eerie "business card" - a cave-house in Sedlec. What is so interesting about the chapel? The number of skeletons? By no means. There are a total of about fifty thousand of them. Sedletskaya ossicle so would remain an unknown ossuary, if not master Frantisek Rint. It's on his marvelous carvings that tourists come from all over the Czech Republic and even from abroad.

History of the cemetery

First of all, tourists are concerned about the question of where in the small Siedlec taken so many skeletons. Maybe they were exported from abroad? It's not far from the truth. The fact is that in the Christian tradition there is a belief that it is very good for the soul to be buried in a holy place - under a monastery or church. In the thirteenth century, the Cistercian abode was in Sedlec. The King of the Czech Republic, Otokar the Second, sent in 1278 the abbot of the monastery of Henry to the Holy Land. The abbot returned home with a handful of land, which he scooped up on Calvary - the mountain where they crucified Jesus Christ. He dispelled this soil above the cemetery of the monastery. This strategic move greatly increased the income of the monastery. From now on, all the rich people of both the Czech Republic and neighboring countries wanted to be buried at the monastery. The dead arrived, which was fueled by epidemics and religious wars. And already in the fifteenth century before the monks there was a need to build a catastrophe in Sedlec.

Transformation into the ossuary

Together, the monks built a small chapel. Old skeletons began to be added to it, and to put "fresh" dead bodies in the liberated graves. The Sedlec catastrophe (Czech Republic) became known also because a certain half-blind monk, whose name was lost in history, driven by a passion for order, began to bleach the bones with chlorine and stack them in neat pyramids. And when this monk died, in the corners of the chapel stood six piles a few meters high. To continue the monk's business, none of the brethren had the desire to arise. The chapel was closed, and so it stood until the end of the eighteenth century.

Transformation into a unique landmark

The Age of Enlightenment, which also affected the Czech Republic, led to secularization of European states and a decrease in the number of monasteries. In 1784, the monastery was disbanded by order of the emperor, and the monastery lands along with the bones were bought by a noble family of Schwarzenbergs. For a long time, the new owners did not know what to do with the chapel. Finally, in 1870 an original idea came to the head of the genus. He hired a wood carver of František Rint. The task of the master was the ordering of the bones in the ossuary. This genius manifests itself in everything. And the "material" at hand did not embarrass the woodcarver at all. He bleached the skeletons again with bleach and went to work. The result of his work can now be admired in the Sedlec catastrophe.

The main attractions of the chapel

Order "to create something gothic" master Rint understood in his own way. For work, he chose forty thousand human skeletons. He took them to pieces and began decorating the chapel. As a result, the ossuaries turned not just into an eerie repository of human remains. This is a real work of art. Everything in the chapel is made of bones - small details of the decor, vases, monstrosities on both sides of the altar and even the arms of the Schwarzenberg family. A huge admiration and at the same time awe gives visitors a chandelier. The master showed in it, so to speak, aerobatics. The lamp uses all the bones in the human body. And on top of the master left an autograph on the wall. Guess what it's made of?

The Siedlce Dam: reviews

Not many people dare enter the chapel. But those who overcome fear, assure: the feeling of horror goes to the background, it is only to look at works of art that fill the interior of the ossuaries. After all, we contemplate with the aesthetic pleasure of crafts made of ivory. And goose bumps do not go away. And in this case, we see before ourselves the bones of long-dead people. In addition, not intact, in the form of a skeleton, and dismantled into fragments. If you abandon the origin of the material, it turns out very nice. But then soul-saving reflections on the frailty of being come to mind. In short, tourists are advised to spend sixty crowns to see this miracle.