The town of Kutná Hora, about an hour east of Prague, is famous for two things: (1) Sedlec Ossuary, a.k.a. the “Bone Church,” and (2) its old silver mine and mint. I took advantage of the hot, sunny day of Friday, 29 June (the first of a succession of glorious sunny days that has continued up through today, 3 July) to take the train from Prague to Kutná Hora for a rare day trip.
I started with Sedlec Ossuary, since it’s walkable from Kutná Hora’s main train station. (For a small town, Kutná Hora is not particularly walkable. The train station is a fair distance from the ossuary, which in turn is over a mile from most of the sights in town). On the way, I passed the Philip Morris factory, the town’s main employer (besides perhaps tourism). Based on the way Czechs and most other Europeans puff away, I can only assume it’s doing a roaring business.
I don’t understand why smoking is so much more prevalent in Europe than in the United States. Developing countries (Romania comes to mind) typically have higher rates of smoking than developed nations. But Czechia, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, and Croatia are all prosperous, yet smoky. Perhaps it’s that 30-40 years ago, all of these countries were just beginning to recover from decades of economic mismanagement under communism (Czechia & former Yugoslavia) or fascism-lite (Spain & Portugal) and in effect were developing countries. I dunno (29 June 2018).
After about 15 minutes of walking, I reached Sedlec Bone Church, which is quite unassuming from the outside.
In the cemetery surrounding the church, I noticed that about 90% of the people buried here were surnamed Rodina. That’s definitely an Old World small town thing — a whole village where everybody’s at least distantly related (29 June 2018).
Inside, though, it’s clear that the monks who once lived here wanted to be constantly reminded of the inevitability of death.
The bone designs start out simple enough (29 June 2018).
The view looking back out toward the entrance (29 June 2018).
While the monks’ bone designs were simpler shapes, in part designed to more efficiently store skeletons that were too numerous for the graveyard to handle, later bone artists, like Herr Rint who has left his bone signature on the wall, went overboard with their artistic embellishment, as we shall see… (29 June 2018).
This bone chandelier supposedly contains at least one of every bone found in the human body (29 June 2018).
A bone coat of arms? Why not (29 June 2018).
This display case contains skulls of people who were injured (surprisingly, not all of these head injuries were fatal) fighting in the Hussite Wars in the 1400s. Jan Hus was a 15th-century Czech proto-Martin Luther. His followers and their opponents rampaged through this area, much like the religious wars of the Protestant Reformation which began a century later (29 June 2018).
The Hussite Wars, and the medieval plagues that were going on around the same time, furnished many of the skeletons for the ossuary. This bone chalice is a Hussite symbol. Which is kind of ironic, since the Hussites trashed this very monastery and massacred all of the monks (29 June 2018).
Across the way from the Bone Church, I popped into the Cathedral of Assumption of Our Lady and St. John the Baptist, which was, along with the ossuary and much of the town of Kutná Hora, once part of a large Cistercian monastery. I enjoyed taking my time in the church to read all of the displays describing the history of the Cistercian order, because I geek out on that type of stuff.
29 June 2018
I’ve now seen enough of these that I can recognize a Gothic cathedral when I spot one (29 June 2018).
This chapel is more than a little over the top (29 June 2018).
From there, I applied sunblock (I found small travel-size non-sticky non-greasy bottles of sunblock in Prague and stocked up) and walked the 20 or so minutes into town. Kutná Hora is a very tidy, charming Czech town. Although Sedlec Ossuary and St. Barbara’s Cathedral are certainly tour group favorites, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Kutná Hora, overall, feels more local than touristy.
29 June 2018
29 June 2018
That’s the bell tower of St. James’ Church behind me (29 June 2018).
This fountain has some unusual Gothic touches. Wells like this were vital in Kutná Hora because waste from the town’s silver mine completely contaminated the river. I tested it and I can attest that the fountain still works and the water is drinkable (29 June 2018).
Kutná Hora’s plague column is undergoing restoration. Towns all over Europe erected these pillars to give thanks from deliverance from plagues, and hopefully to ward off the same in the future (29 June 2018).
Kutná Hora’s cute main square, Palacky Square, hosts a couple of nice outdoor cafés. And, refreshingly, it’s not tourist-mobbed. I ate lunch here (29 June 2018).
Well, OK, this town isn’t completely tidy:
99 problems, man (29 June 2018).
My next stop was the Museum of Silver. Kutná Hora was at one time the second-largest city in Bohemia after Prague, due to the silver mine and mint in town. (The silver also financed the monasteries, cathedrals, and so forth all over town.) This was where, in the Middle Ages and up until the 1600s, when cheap imports of silver from the Spanish New World colonies made the now mostly played-out mine unprofitable, the kings of Bohemia had the silver for the Prague groschen, the coin of the realm, extracted, processed, and minted. In the mint and mine’s later years, after the Austrian Hapsburgs gained control of Bohemia, they called the coins thalers, from whence the word “dollar” originated.
The Silver Museum occupies buildings formerly associated with the silver mine (29 June 2018).
The museum features several displays on the medieval silver mining and refining process (29 June 2018).
But the real highlight of the museum is the 45 minute-or-so tour of a portion of the old mine. It didn’t seem right to take photos down there, but I snapped a quick selfie on our way down. It was pretty cool when the tour guide asked us to turn off our helmet lights at one point. I have never been in darkness that total before! And I was surprised at how wet it was in the mine. The miners spent as much time pumping water out as they did hauling ore up (29 June 2018).
After the Silver Museum, I stopped by Kutná Hora’s last remaining must-see sight, St. Barbara’s Cathedral. St. Barbara is the patron saint of miners, firefighters, and other similarly dangerous professions, so it makes sense that her church is the biggest one in this former mining town.
Those are some legit flying buttresses there (29 June 2018).
There are nice views over the town from the path that leads up to the cathedral.
The path to and from St. Barbara’s Cathedral is lined with Counter-Reformation-era statues that serve as propaganda pieces. This one is pretty stern (29 June 2018).
The path also offers splendid views of Kutná Hora (29 June 2018).
And with that, I hopped back on the train and in an hour was back in the big city. As fun as Kutná Hora was, Prague is where I want to be. I really, really like Prague, as my upcoming blog posts will attest.