The Ossuary

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THE OSSUARY:

Good-bye.

Do you have a 20-haler coin?

You don't have 20 haleru?

Ninety haleru

Thank you.

And you will take it.

This picture. For 90.

This is the Schwarzenberg one.

Fifty-five plus five is 60-

One, two, three-

I'll tell you,

I've known that about myself

I have to be able to do it all

I'm a pensioner

worth all the money

This is Schwarzenberg's coat of arms...

the monstrance by the main altar.

Ninety haleru

No, no, because

you'll go home again.

The return trip is arranged-

I'm starting the tour now!

Please, teacher,

bring them over here!

Yes, this is the church,

this is the mass grave-

- You must close this.

- Take your hats off as well.

Hats off, yes.

And quiet!

And please, if you touch a bone,

you'll pay a 50-crown fine!

You are inside the biggest ossuary

in the world...

estimates say there are

about 70,000 skeletons.

These are the bones

from the plague in the year 1318...

when the plague was so bad

in the Czech lands...

that they buried 30,000 people

here in one year.

- Do you know what the plague is, children?

- A disease.

Yes, an infectious disease.

And then there are bones

from the Hussite wars in 1421...

when Kutn Hora was

the first royal city after Prague.

The great cathedral and the cloister

were burned and torn down...

and the Cistercians were mostly killed

Some of them saved themselves by escaping,

and they returned here.

And they began to take the bones

out of these mass graves here.

But since there were so many bones...

they decided to put them here,

in this chapel...

and that this would simply be

a mass grave.

In the year 1511,

a half-blind monk...

organized them into six pyramids,

as in all ossuaries around the world.

Whether in Mlnk or in France,

they are always built in pyramids.

But here, Rint created something

without equal in all the world.

It was just a hundred years ago...

when he was invited

by Count Schwarzenberg of Orlk...

a Czech count, who had an estate here

and a brick factory...

and who donated all his extra funds

to these relics.

So he invited Rimt to work here

with his wife and his children.

Two children just like you.

They had to help drill holes

in the bones and put in wires...

and he stayed here

underground for 10 years.

Here it's worth noticing

that this beautiful chandelier...

is made of all the bones

contained in a human body

Do you know what a dollar is?

An American dollar, have you seen it?

So, they offered us

$100,000 in 1968...

for the chandelier to go to America.

Stand right here on the grave

and look up at it.

See how beautiful it is!

The great ant in it especially is-

Working with wood

he could have fixed this...

but here he tried to use

all the bones in the human body...

and this is the horrific art

that he created out of that.

Look at those legs in the chalices.

What imagination!

What a number of bones!

When you see the pyramids do downstairs-

Think about it,

if the pyramid fell to pieces...

and they asked

each of us individually...

to create something out of it,

we'd probably be totally lost.

I often think, I could fix this or that,

a head here, a bone there...

but to create something by myself,

other than what he did,

really, I come upstairs

and I know nothing at all

Touching costs 50 crowns,

touching the bones.

Each bone is drilled

one to four times...

with a wire pulled through-

Forty cubic meters are buried here,

on the left...

under an iron cross

with the name Schwarzenberg.

He did not use those

for the chapel decorations...

because nobody would fit in here.

On November 2 we have a mass here

for all those who are watching you...

and we honor it as a mass grave.

That's why we don't like it

to be noisy here...

and I especially feel so close to them

after a year and a half here...

that I won't allow them to be hurt.

Lately vandalism has spread

Stupid boys write on the skulls...

replace the bones-

So the other day

I washed them for three hours...

and ballpoint pen marks

cannot be washed off.

50 now there's a fine.

Whoever touches the bones

has to immediately pay 50 crowns.

By the first left bench you see

Schwarzenberg's coat of arms.

It was given to him

when he chased out the Turks in 1658...

and defeated them by the city of Rab.

Rab means raven in Czech...

so a raven made of human bones

pecks out a Turk's eye.

Here, grateful that he'd been paid well

for 10 years and not hurried...

and that his children, the mother

and the whole family were fed...

the grateful Rint made this for him

out of bones.

It is truly a work of art.

And to the left of the coat of arms

you will see two altars...

with bones broken by Hussite arms.

So take a good look at everything.

Don't throw money anywhere.

I am very strict about the that.

Under king Premysl Otakar II...

soil from Mount Calvary, Christ's

crucifixion place, was brought here...

and it was scattered

and foreigners were invited...

mainly Austrians, Belgians,

and Germans...

and the cemetery

was spread over 16 hectares.

We keep finding proof of that.

Two weeks ago,

they were putting in plumbing...

and some college students

from Prague were here...

and they jumped in the ditch

and each took national bones home...

jaws with beautiful teeth,

whole spines-

So children, please.

I am really strict about it.

I am not a guide,

just a replacement here.

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