- Hitting all these places would make for one grim road trip.
Eventually, nothing will remain of any of us except a pile of bones. Some people think it’s good to be reminded about that fact every now and then.
Others think you should be reminded of it at all possible times. So, they build ossuaries — things to store and display skeletal human remains.
Ossuaries can be something as innocuous as a small box containing a skull, or perhaps a coffin with an entire skeleton. Some, however, go way beyond that and are rooms or entire buildings adorned with every bone from the human body.
Here are eight examples of bizarre but eerily beautiful places and buildings made out of human bones.
8. Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte
If you were to enter the church of Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte in Rome, you wouldn’t think it’s anything weird. However, if you’re lucky, the door to the left of the main altar may be open and you can enter the church’s crypt.
Adorning the wall of the crypt is a huge crucifix built entirely out of skulls. Skull and crossbones designs are embedded in the walls, and there are niches with shelves bending under the weight of even more skulls.
The crypt is a part of Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte’s role as a death cult church. Its entire purpose is to remind Christians that you’re not in this world to stay and act accordingly.
Yet, the most creepily amazing thing in Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte’s crypt are the two chandeliers, built out of skullcaps, vertebrae, and sacra. Wonder if any other places have bone chandeliers…
7. Paris Catacombs
The catacombs of Paris have a reputation as notorious death traps, yet only one person is known to have died by getting lost in the corridors. That said, you’ll find plenty of dead people in the catacombs.
Multiple underground ossuaries dot the tunnel network stretching out under the City of Lights. Most of them were built between the 1740s and 1780s when Paris’ graveyards got so full that the weight of the corpses broke the catacombs’ walls and cadavers tumbled into the corridors.
The bones of the dead — including many famous figures of the French Revolution — were initially deposited into the walls without any real plan. Later, people began putting more thought into their placement and constructed repeating wall patterns from the bones.
6. Skull Tower
In 1809, during the First Serbian Uprising, a group of defeated rebels fighting their Ottoman rulers decided to blow themselves up rather than face brutal execution. In their memory, the 952 rebels’ skulls were embedded in the walls of a tower built in the city of Nish.
Skull Tower was mostly destroyed at the end of the Ottoman rule, but a portion of it still remains. Displayed within a protective chapel, the preserved section of the tower is some 15 feet high.
Today, 58 skulls still grin from within the concrete of the tower walls. The structure is today one of the most popular tourist attractions in Serbia.
5. Skull Chapel
The Skull Chapel in the town of Kudowa-Zdroj is one unsettling place. Walking inside, it’s hard to comprehend the number of corpses surrounding you.
The walls, ceiling, and in places even the floor are completely covered in human bones. Overall, it’s estimated that the chapel houses the earthly remains of nearly 25,000 people.
Fun fact — the skulls given a special place on the altar belonged to the chapel’s builders.
However, the chapel wasn’t built for spectacle. It was constructed in the late 1770s as a solution and memorial to the staggering number of corpses left behind by 150 years of warfare, including the Thirty Years’ War, the three Silesian Wars, and a plague epidemic for good measure.
4. Capuchin Crypt
Did you think Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte was the only church in Rome with a bony crypt? Not by a long shot.
The Capuchin Crypt, housed beneath Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappucini, holds the remains of some 3,700 people Capuchin monks. The reason for the abundance of bones is that the soil in the crypt comes from Jerusalem.
It’s a rare monk who wouldn’t want to be buried in the soil of the Holy Land. Yet, there wasn’t room for them all, so the living brothers began decorating the crypt with the oldest bones.
There are multiple macabre works of art within the crypt, constructed of entire skeletons. Yet, the most gruesome may be the altar with a cross made from a pair of desiccated arms.
3. San Bernardino alle Ossa
Like a couple of the other entries, the creepy story of the church of San Bernardino alle Ossa in Milan, Italy, begins with overflowing graveyards. Originally simply a 13th-century chamber to house old bones, San Bernadino alle Ossa grew larger and more macabre over the years as its popularity among visitors increased.
The entire church was ruined in a 1712 fire. As it was rebuilt, its walls were decorated with elaborate bone arrangements and gorgeous frescoes.
The ossuary is honestly quite a stunning work of eerie art. In fact, it was so impressive to King John V of Portugal that he decided he wanted his own corpse church. Speaking of which…
2. Capela dos Ossos
Capela dos Ossos (translating to the Chapel of Bones) is a small chapel in Evora, Portugal, built after King John’s aforementioned 1738 visit to San Bernardino alle Ossa. The King ordered local Franciscan monks to exhume some 5,000 bodies from the city’s cemeteries to decorate the chapel.
We’re not sure how on board the friars were, but they did what they were told. They didn’t have the resources to pain frescoes like in Italy, so they decided to double down on the macabre.
By which we mean that there are two dried corpses, with their withered flesh still on them, on full display within the chapel. The dead child and adult are meant to remind you of the passing of earthly life.
Because the walls full of skulls and bones didn’t drive the point home.
1. Sedlec Ossuary
The Sedlec Ossuary is likely one of the boniest places in the world. The small chapel in Sedlec, the Czech Republic, contains an absolutely enormous number of corpses.
No one is quite sure just how many there are. The conservative estimate stands at around 40,000, but there may be pieces of up to 70,000 people in the church.
Yet, those bones aren’t just sitting on tables and walls. They’ve been used in some horrifically creative ways, such as to recreate the Schwarzenberger noble family’s coat of arms entirely out of bones.
The most impressive piece of grim furniture, however, has to be the chandelier. The enormous piece contains at least one of every single bone found in the human body.
Oh, and on one wall is the signature of the artist who created the chilling works — also rendered with bones.