[travel] The Sedlec Ossuary

[mattbell]

The Sedlec Ossuary was built from the bones of 30,000 victims of the Black Plague. For an artist, the chance to work with the remains of 30,000 people doesn't come along very often. Generally, for it to be okay at all, the people have to die naturally, rapidly, and in very large numbers such that there isn't time for individual burial. In addition, enough time has to pass such that any personal link to the deceased is gone. In this case, the bones were kept in a church crypt for 500 years before a local sculptor had a go at them. The aim was to create a monument to the dead, and the massive skull piles do give you a sense for the effects of the Black Death..













Flash has interesting effects, as it lights up the eye sockets



The other decorations are all mixtures of pretty, creepy, clever, tacky, and weird in differing amounts. One that scored high on both clever and tacky was the coat of arms of the family that paid for the project. I applaud the artist's clever use of vertebrae and the irony that the skull in the bottom right corner of the coat of arms is meant to represent the skull of a defeated Turkish invader, and it's made from the skull of a defeated Turkish invader. For once the map IS the territory! On the other hand, the whole thing is kind of wrong in a chapel mourning Black Death victims.



Speaking of wrong, toward the end of my visit, this guy showed up. He swears that this is the only sweater he had, and he only wore it because it was raining outside. It was way too funny to not document though:

Comments

[mary-wroth.livejournal.com]

When I saw the piles o'skulls photos on Flickr - I thought you might be in Paris (but that didn't make any damn sense). That looks just like the catacombs.



(bad photo quality due to scanning)

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Oh... unelated, but the subway cars in Hungary look just like the 1950s-1960s cars from the Transit Museum in Brooklyn. The subway there is otherwise excellent.

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

That place looks pretty amazing! I had no idea such things actually existed.