I saw on CNN recently that the Sedlec Ossuary at Kutná Hora,- near Prague, was considered one of the top 10 spookiest buildings in the world. The history and reason for being for that Ossuary is outlined at its own website. I visited the Ossuary in late 2010 and took these snaps….

Sometime in 2012, an Ossuary will open here in Brno. Before doing any renovation or new construction in Brno, it is standard practice to do a preliminary archeological dig, but what they found several years ago under Jakubske namesti or “St. Jacob’s Square” was a surprise to everybody. They found some 50,000 skeletons stuffed under the square into a medieval Ossuary. Once piled in neat rows, at some point water and mud had flooded the gigantic underground ossuary and jumbled the thousands of bones.

The bones, thought to be from the 1600 and 1700s, are believed to have been dug up from an old cemetery to make space for more burials as in most of the ossuaries and catacombs in Europe. It is the sheer amount of skulls, bones and skeletons here, second only to the Catacombs in Paris, that make the Brno ossuary especially significant. It is clear that many of the people died of various disease which can be seen in the coloration of the bones themselves. Though all the bones are tinted yellow — having never been exposed to sunlight — the extra yellow ones likely died of cholera, while the red tinted bones probably died from the plague.

Unfortunately the bones are not yet open to the public. Due to having been exposed to water, the bones are still unsanitary and may carry bacteria and disease, and need to be cleaned before the ossuary can be fully opened to the public. The opening is planned for 2012.