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News > World

Boney Towers Come Down as Czech Ossuary Monestary Gets Makeover

  • Aside from the pyramids, the site also has a chandelier, a coat of arms and various other decorations made from every bone in the human body.

    Aside from the pyramids, the site also has a chandelier, a coat of arms and various other decorations made from every bone in the human body. | Photo: Reuters

Published 20 February 2019
Opinion

Over 40,000 bodies make up the eery structure which stands in the mining town of Kutna Hora in central Czech Republic.

The Czech Republic’s iconic Sedlec ossuary church is getting a makeover, as restorers carefully disassemble, clean, and rebuild the four eery pyramids of bones which center as the main attraction.

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Over the course of two years, experts involved in the project will clean the remains of more than 40,000 human bodies, restore and strengthen the church’s foundation which have fallen into disrepair due to age.

“The bones will be cleansed of surface dirt and then soaked in lime solution. This is a natural method of preservation which was also used during the creation of these pyramids,” said conservation expert Tomas Kral.

To make sure the structures are rebuilt in the original format, the restoration team has hired a firm, Nase Historie, to produce computer models of the bone pyramids using photos and videomapping.

The site, which draws half a million visitors every year, not only features the four large pyramids of bones - it also boasts a chandelier, a coat of arms and various other decorations made from every bone in the human body.

“Many people find it weird today and come to see this as some dark spectacle, a house of horrors,” said Radka Krejci, in charge of operations at the local parish.

“But we do not want it to be perceived like that, it is a place of reverence, a burial place.”

The bones came from a cemetery adjacent to a monastery founded by the Cistercian order in 1142.

The burial ground was enlarged during a plague epidemic in the 14th century. In 1318, about 30,000 people were buried here and more joined them in the 15th century during religious wars between Roman Catholics and the Hussites.

A lack of space prompted the decision to exhume the bones and place them in a depositary, one of a number of such sites around Europe, during the 16th century. Legend says that a half-blind monk built most of the bone structures.

The present appearance of the bone structures dates from 1870 and is the work of Czech wood-carver Frantisek Rint, who added the various decorations to the original pyramids.

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