Visiting the dead might seem like a macabre thing to do, yet few things make you appreciate life more than seeing thousands of skeletons in one place.
If you want to consider memento mori in quieter places, you need to get off the beaten track, so here are 15 beautiful yet unusual crypts, catacombs, and ossuaries you need to visit.
(1) Sedlec Ossuary, Kutna Hora, near Prague, Czech Republic
Sedlec is definitely one of the weirdest places in Europe. The Ossuary attracts around 200,000 visitors every year, who come to see the bones of 40,000-70,000 people.
The skeletal remains have been transformed into astonishing works of art, including a chandelier, coats of arms, and even the name of the artist himself. It takes a special kind of person to immortalize themselves using the remains of the dead!
Click here to view more of my photos from Sedlec on Flickr.
But the Ossuary wasn’t planned to look the way it does. When the cemetery was remodeled in the 16th century, the bones of the exhumed skeletons were simply stacked in the chapel. In 1870, a local woodcarver was employed to make sense of the bones.
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