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[uneek23]

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[spiral78]

It's at a small town called Kutna Hora, which is assessible by train or bus from Prague. It's a chapel outside of the city. The story I was told is that some crusader brought back some 'earth' from Jerusalem hundreds of years ago, and used it to sanctify this particular chapel. The chapel therefore became a very desirable place to be buried. But, when the plague (s) came, there were too many bodies for the little chapel and its grounds to accomodate. The bodies were basically just stored there, until some monk (you'll find his name and story at the chapel) had the rather bizarre idea to make sculptures out of the bones. The chapel features four huge bells made all of bones, a chandelier featuring at least one of each of the bones in the human body, and there are other variousl works, all made entirely of bones.
I've been there several times, and I have to say I can't decide whether it's grotesque or beautiful - probably it's both.
I once took a group of British TEFL trainees there on a Halloween trip. It turned out to be a scarier trip than I'd expected - as we were seated on the train, one of the girls looked out the window and officials were covering a guy up on the platform in plastic. I assumed from his looks that he'd been a homeless guy who'd frozen or died there of some natural causes. They zipped up the body bag, there just a metre from our window. It kind of made the trip to Kutna Hora a little more poignant that it would normally have been.

[parrothead]

I recommend it if you have some morbid curiosities and would like to see a butt bone. Just to add to the other poster, the church is called Kostnice.

[denise]

Definitely a worthwhile trip!

There�s also a smaller one in Melnik, about an hour out of Prague.

d