11 Most Bizarre European Ossuaries
Across Europe in many predominantly Catholic or Orthodox countries are sites known as ossuaries, often referred to as “bone churches”. Creepy by today’s standards, these churches decorated from floor to ceiling with human skeletal remains were often used in places where major plagues had hit or where burial space had become scare. Though the original intention in many areas was for bones to be buried when space became available, many of these remains are still up and hanging in these bone churches as a testament to this peculiar religious tradition.
Like catacombs, charnel houses, reliquaries and other religious structures, ossuaries have become an offbeat tourist attraction for those looking to learn more about some of the less frequently told stories in European history. Spooky and scary, a trip to these ossuaries is a great destination for anyone seeking something to creepy to do while they vacation in Europe.
The Beinhaus (Bone House) in Hallstatt, Austria
The town of Hallstatt looks like the kind of Austrian town that the Sound of Music might have been set in. On a beautiful forested mountain, next to a perfectly blue lake, filled with charming 19th century houses, the town is a perfect vision of cheer. Except of course, for the room filled with skulls.
Behind the Hallstatt Catholic Church, near the 12th-century St. Micheal’s Chapel, in a small and lovingly cared for cemetery is the Hallstatt Beinhaus (Bone House), also known as the Charnel House. A small building, it is tightly stacked with over 1200 skulls. Because Hallstatt finds itself in such a lovely location, it also finds itself in very short supply of burial grounds.
In the 1700s, the Church began digging up corpses to make way for the newly dead. The bodies which had been buried for only 10 to 15 years were then stacked inside the charnel house. Lest this all sound overly callous to the memory of the dead, there is actually a charm to the whole affair that Hallstatt can’t seem to escape even with a room full of skulls.
Once the skeletons were exhumed and properly bleached in the sun, the family members would stack the bones next to their nearest kin. In 1720 a tradition began of painting the skulls with symbolic decorations as well as dates of birth and death so that the dead would be remembered, even if they no longer had a grave. Of the 1200 skulls, some 610 of them were lovingly painted, with an assortment of symbols, laurels for valor, roses for love, and so on. The ones from the 1700s are painted with thick dark garlands, while the newer ones, from the 1800s on, bear brighter floral styles.
Though this practice has been dying out since the 1960s, there is a much more recent skull in the Beinhaus. Beside the cross with a gold tooth is the skull of a woman who died in 1983. Her last request was to be put in the Beinhaus. Her skull was entered into the ossuary in 1995, the very last bone to be placed in the Beinhaus.
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