ESSAY The Ossuary Of Kutna Hora g karunakar G Karunakar served the Govt of Karnataka as Law Officer for three decades. He enjoys travel and has visited a 100 countries.
Last summer, I was church-bagging in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. Having visited all its major attractions, I decided on a day’s trip out of the buzzing city. My hotel manager suggested that I visit a medieval town called Kutna Hora, sixty-five kilometers east of Prague and said that I would be rewarded with a glimpse of something rare and unusual. He disclosed the fact that the said town, besides its popular silver mines, boasted a Bohemian period church decorated with human bones. Human bones? I needed no further enticement. Following his suggestion, I boarded a suburban train the next morning from Prague Central… In an hour I was in Kutna Hora, the 13th century silver mining town. In the square outside the station is an elegant ornamental church dedicated to patron saint Barbara with eight radial chapels and trapezoidal interiors. I spent about an hour going around this magnificent edifice and then had a coffee break. Though a local bus was in sight, I decided, rather perversely, to take a walk in the sweltering heat to the western suburb of the town, where I would find the Sedlec Graveyard Chapel aka Ossuary Chapel or ‘Bone Church’. It stands majestically, and appropriately, in the middle of a cemetery.