Today’s excursion was reminiscent of the third Lord of the Rings movie: an overwhelming amount of skulls. We made the trip out to the Church of Bones in Kutna Hora, where the skeletons of thousands on thousands of people were unearthed and used to create the interior decor of an entire building in 1870. The Catholic chapel became a hot spot for burials across Europe after an abbot brought back a jar of Holy Soil from Golgatha, the place where Jesus died and was buried, which designated the site itself as holy. Eventually, the church had to exhume all of the bodies that lay resting there since the 13th century due to overcrowding. It was simultaneously unnerving and cool.

Bones from every part of the human body are organized into massive structures within the chapel; skulls and finger bones alike were displayed piled up into pyramids and assembled into chandeliers. The church was brimming with tourists glued to their phone screens, taking hundreds of pictures of the bleached bones that covered walls and corners. I can’t imagine the artistic eye it must have taken to design such elaborate structures like the ones we saw. Admittedly, bones aren’t a medium I would feel comfortable creating art with. But as creepy as may have looked, I felt oddly grateful to be exposed to such a different form of creativity. I can only guess that the girl captured above was wrestling with similar thoughts.