Beneath the innocuous exterior of the ‘Kaplica Czaszek’ or Skull Chapel in Czermna, Poland, is an astonishingly ghastly interior adorned with tens of thousands of real human bones and skulls.
The bones belong to the thousands of war victims from the Thirty Years’ War and Silesian Wars, and victims from the cholera outbreaks. Over 21,000 additional remains lie in a crypt beneath the chapel that is accessible via trapdoor.
The skeletal remains were foraged by local priest Vaclav Tomasek between 1776 and 1804, who cleaned them up and arranged them around the chapel’s interior. Tomasek placed the bones of authorities, like the local mayor’s skull, on the altar, along with more unusual specimens like a skull deformed by syphilis and skulls damaged by bullet holes.
The eerie chapel was intended as a shrine for the dead, and a ‘memento mori’ for the living. Amongst the sprawling skulls, a sign near the entrance reads “Come to Judgement” in Spanish.
[via Smithsonian Mag]