Yesterday we ventured to the medieval town of Kutná Hora for a day trip. Once a bustling center of mining and commerce, it’s now a quiet little town about an hour and a half from Prague.
We first went to is called the Sedlec Ossurary, but is known as the “Bone Church.” The story behind it is as follows: Around the time of The Plague, people were dying so fast they didn’t know what to do with them, and sometimes resorted to using mass graves as they were strapped for space and time for proper burials. Around 1400, they dug up one of said graves to build a church, and decided to decorate it with the human bones of the people in that grave. The task of furnishing the church was allegedly give to a half-blind monk, who used the bones of about 40,000 people in his work. The chandelier below includes every bone in the human body. It’s incredibly startling at first, but becomes morbidly cool as you become more adjusted to it. It also sparked some interesting discussions for us about the concept of death in different societies, and what are appropriate ways to honor people. I heard lots of students asking each other if they would be ok if after they were dead that’s how they were displayed. Personally, I’m still unsure.
Next, we ventured over to the former Royal Mint. It was pretty, but there wasn’t much else to it. We then walked over to St. Barbara’s Cathedral. About its name: St. Barbara was the patron saint of mining; it is not actually a cathedral as it was not erected for a bishop. Besides that, it was huge and absolutely stunning. It never fails to be incredibly humbling and inspiring to be in such beautiful and old buildings.
We finished the day with a traditional Czech meal of vegetable soup, chicken, potatoes and a pastry and slept the whole way home.
