You Won't Believe What This Ghoulish European Church is Decorated With!

To glance at the Cemetary Church of All Saints in Sedlec, Czech Republic, from the outside it looks like a fairly regular church. However, if you take a closer look the decorations may hint at the spooky findings that wait visitors on the inside.

Underneath the church in the Sedlec Ossuary is an enormous mausoleum which holds the remains of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, but these remains aren't buried, instead they have been used to decorate the ossuary in huge, creepy sculptures!

Around 1511 a monk was given the enormous task of stacking the bones inside the chapel to conserve space, and by 1870 the bones were being artistically arranged by a woodcarver named Frantisek RInt. Rint was only originally supposed to organize the bones in the ossuary, but instead decided to creature sculpted 'masterpieces' to honor the dead, including a coat of arms to impress him employers, the House of Schwarzenberg.

The Sedlec Ossuary receives over 200,000 tourists a year and is one of the Czech Republic's most popular attractions! Certainly proving that we all possess a strong sense of morbid curiosity.

There are numerous different sculptures inside the Ossuary, including bell-shaped mounds, piers and monstrances. There are also a number of other props which have been added such as doll heads and fake snakes.

Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini

Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, or Our Lady of the Conception of the Capuchins, is a church in Rome, Italy, commissioned in 1626 by Pope Urban VIII, whose brother, Antonio Barberini, was a Capuchin friar. It is located at Via Veneto, close to Piazza Barberini.

Crypt
The crypt is located just under the church. Cardinal Antonio Barberini, who was a member of the Capuchin order, in 1631 ordered the remains of thousands of Capuchin friars exhumed and transferred from the friary Via dei Lucchesi to the crypt. The bones were arranged along the walls, and the friars began to bury their own dead here, as well as the bodies of poor Romans, whose tomb was under the floor of the present Mass chapel. Here the Capuchins would come to pray and reflect each evening before retiring for the night.

The crypt, or ossuary, now contains the remains of 4,000 friars buried between 1500 and 1870, during which time the Roman Catholic Church permitted burial in and under churches. The underground crypt is divided into five chapels, lit only by dim natural light seeping in through cracks, and small fluorescent lamps. The crypt walls are decorated with the remains in elaborate fashion, making this crypt a macabre work of art. Some of the skeletons are intact and draped with Franciscan habits, but for the most part, individual bones are used to create elaborate ornamental designs.

The crypt originated at a period of a rich and creative cult for their dead; great spiritual masters meditated and preached with a skull in hand.

A plaque in one of the chapels reads, in three languages, "What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be." This is a memento mori.

Interior

The church was designed by Antonio Casoni and built between 1626 and 1631. It comprises a small nave and several side chapels. The chapels are notable as one contains the body of St. Felix of Cantalice and another is the tomb of the Blessed Crispin of Viterbo.

The first chapel has a dramatic altarpiece of St. Michael the Archangel (c.1635) by Guido Reni, and Gherardo delle Notti's Christ Mocked. The second chapel has a Transfiguration by Mario Balassi, and a Nativity (c. 1632) by Lanfranco. The third chapel has a Saint Francis receives stigmata by Domenichino. The fourth chapel houses a Prayer in the Gesthemane (c. 1632) by Baccio Ciarpi. In the fifth chapel is a Saint Anthony by Sacchi, who also painted the Apparition of the Virgin (1645) to Saint Bonaventure in the fifth chapel on the left. The tomb monument for Alexander Sobieski was sculpted by Camillo Rusconi. The third chapel has a Deposition by Andrea Camassei and a Stigmatization of Saint Francis (c. 1570) by Girolamo Muziano. The second chapel has a Santa Felice da Cantaliceby Alessandro Turchi, while the first has a painting of Saint Paul restores vision (c. 1631) by Pietro da Cortona.

Capuchin crypt and ossuary
The church is most famous as an ossuary, known as the Capuchin Crypt, in which is displayed the bones of over 4,000 Capuchin friars, collected between the years of 1528 and 1870. The bones are fashioned into decorative displays in the Baroque and Rococo style. The popularity of the crypt as a tourist attraction once rivalled the Catacombs. The Sedlec ossuary (1870) in the Czech Republic and the Skull Chapel in Poland are said to have been inspired by it.