This is a picture I took while visiting the Ossuary in the Summer of 2011. The Sedlec Ossuary (Czech: kostnice Sedlec) is a small Roman Catholic chapel, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints (Czech: Hřbitovní kostel Všech Svatých) in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, many of whom have had their bones artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel. The ossuary is among the most visited tourist attractions of the Czech Republic, attracting over 200 thousand visitors yearly.

IN MEDIA
In 1970, the centenary of Rint’s contributions, Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer was commissioned to document the ossuary. The result was a 10 minute long frantic-cut film of skeletal images overdubbed with an actual tour-guide’s neutral voice narration. This version was initially banned by the Czech Communist authorities for alleged subversion, and the soundtrack was replaced by a brief spoken introduction and a jazz arrangement by Zdeněk Liška of the poem “Comment dessiner le portrait d’un oiseau” (“How to Draw the Portrait of a Bird”) by Jacques Prévert. Since the Velvet Revolution, the original tour guide soundtrack has been made available.

In the documentary Long Way Round, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman stop to see this church. Dan Cruickshank also views the church in his Adventures in Architecture. It is a major plot device in the John Connolly novel The Black Angel and used as a location for the Dungeons & Dragons movie and the movie Blood & Chocolate. It was also featured in Ripley’s Believe it or Not and is described by Cara Seymour in the final scene of the film Adaptation. It was also the influence for Dr. Satan’s lair in the Rob Zombie film House of 1000 Corpses.