According to wholevehicles.com, Kutná Hora is a small town in Central Bohemia, located 60 km east of Prague. It was founded in the 13th century and in the Middle Ages was one of the largest silver mining centers in Europe. Thanks to this, the city acquired the privileges of a royal city and was the second richest in the Czech kingdom after Prague.

Today, Kutná Hora is precisely a “town”, but thanks to an extremely non-standard monument in the form of a church full of bones, there are more tourists here than in any other UNESCO monument.

How to get to Kutna Hora

From Prague you can get there by train, bus or car.

Trains depart approximately once an hour, travel time – 1 hour – 1 hour 10 minutes. There are two railway stations in Kutná Hora – Kutná Hora main (Kutná Hora hlavní nádraží) and Kutná Hora city (Kutná Hora město). The latter is located closest to the historical center of the city, from the station Kutna Hora main to the center 3 km.

Getting there by bus is also not a problem, during the day a

History

Its history is as follows: in the 13th century, the local abbot returned from a pilgrimage from Jerusalem with a handful of the Holy Land, which he scattered over the local cemetery. This fact allowed the resting place of the townspeople to receive the status of sacred. And soon the cemetery, having become popular, grew to an unprecedented size. Rest here was tantamount to the fact that the deceased goes straight to heaven… Then the plague struck Europe, the cemetery workers were forced to bury the dead “instead of” the former ones – by shifting the ancient bones into tombs (they were called ossuaries) and burying new dead in the vacant places. As a result of such manipulations, the places in the cemetery were resold six times, “collecting” the remains of 40,000 people.

Bones demanded a more honorary position, but there were few opportunities for this. Therefore, at the beginning of the 16th century, a certain monk carefully washed and bleached each bone, folding pyramids from the resulting “material”, with halls, naves and passages. Nobody destroyed the resulting prototype of the church, however, in view of the dubious morality of what was happening, not knowing what to do, for four centuries access to the “church” was closed.

In the 18th century, the owner of the cemetery land, Prince Schwarzenberg ordered that the resulting interior items be put in order, which the local master Rint undertook. Carrying out manipulations with bones, skulls and in general all parts of human skeletons, Rint built the coat of arms of the prince, a chandelier, walls, niches, supports, vaults, shelves, and much more. The resulting church, which tourists from all over the world come to Kutna Hora to see, causes ambiguous feelings. Where to put the remains of people if there is no place in the cemetery? Why not build a spiritual, sacred building, now even more strongly reminding us of the frailty of life.

Entertainment and attractions of Kutna Hora

The city is interesting for numerous monuments of Gothic architecture, and its historical center is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

One of the main attractions of Kutná Hora is the chapel of All Saints with the ossuary at the cemetery or ” Kontnitsa “. The chapel is located on the outskirts of the city, in the town of Sedlec. Its interior is both terrifying and mesmerizing, made of human bones (according to some estimates, the bones of about 40,000 people were used).

The majestic Cathedral of St. Barbara, built at the end of the 14th century, deserves special attention. It is the second largest and most important Gothic temple in the Czech Republic. It will also be interesting to visit the Hradek Silver Museum and the medieval silver mine (Hradek). Children are allowed to enter the mine from the age of 7 accompanied by their parents, or from the age of 10 in groups.

Other sights: St. James’s church, 17th century Jesuit college, Vlašski yard (former mint), baroque plague column, Cathedral of the Resurrection of the Virgin Mary, Church of the Holy Trinity at the cemetery, Church of All Saints, Ursuline Monastery, Church of the Mother of God, Church of St. John of Nepomuk, a stone fountain, a stone house and a monument to St. Wenceslas.