The little chapel that death built
Posted by staff / October 31, 2013 Smithsonian Magazinethe Chapel of SkullsVaclav Tomasek
We imagine it’s hard to forget the end goal while throwing a few prayers heavenward in Poland’s Kaplica Czaszek, the Chapel of Skulls.
Located in one of the country’s oldest towns, this holy house of horrors is rather inconspicuous until the wooden doors are thrown open to reveal the skulls of 3000 victims of war and plague lining the walls.
According to Smithsonian Magazine:
Between 1776 and 1804, the local priest, Vaclav Tomasek, painstakingly gathered, cleaned and carefully arranged skeletons recovered from numerous, shallow mass graves left by the Thirty Years’ War, Silesian Wars and cholera outbreaks. Modeled off of similar ossuaries and catacombs in Rome, the chapel was intended as a shrine for the dead, as well as a “memento mori” for the living.
On the church’s altar, Tomasek placed the bones of important figures and curiosities, including the skull of the local mayor, skulls with bullet holes, a skull deformed by syphilis and the bones of a supposed giant. When the chapel’s creator passed away in 1804, his skull was placed on the altar as well.
Suffice it to say, it wouldn’t be hard to keep the kids from goofing off in this church…if you could get them through the doors in the first place.
Full story at Smithsonian Magazine.
Creepy!