The Sedlec Ossuary is a small Roman Catholic chapel, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. It is one of the World Heritage Sites in the Czech Republic. The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, whose bones have in many cases been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel. Around 1400, a Gothic church was built in the center of the cemetery with a vaulted upper level and a lower chapel to be used as an ossuary. After 1511, the task of exhuming skeletons and stacking their bones in the chapel was given to a half-blind monk of the order

Skulls and bones on top of the door as you walk in

An enormous chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the centre with garlands of skulls draping the vault

The signature of Rint, also executed in bone, on the wall near the entrance

Four enormous bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners of the chapel full of bones

Each of the four enormous mounds of bones in each corner of the church are arranged differently with different arrangement display at the front – this is one of them

This is another arrangement of one of the corner mounds

Close up

Another front arrangement

Close up

Another front arrangement

Skulls line the walls of each corner of the mounds

Another wall arrangement

Glass cabinet with skulls arranged, there are two of these cabinets situated in the middle of each corner

Wide angle from the far right corner looking into the middle of the church

Other works include piers and monstrances flanking the altar

Close up

Part of the ceiling. Hanging hip bones!

Close up

A coat of arms for the House of Schwarzenberg

Close up

Wide angle from the left side of the church looking towards the middle

The outside of the Ossuary (Bone Church) at Sedlec. The church is surrounded by gravestones