An ossuary is a place where the bones of the dead are kept. Most often, an ossuary is an urn or a vault, but perhaps the worlds most fascinating such place is the Ossuary Chapel in the Czech Republic.

An adjoining cemetery started in the 12th Century beside a newly founded monastery. In the following century, an abbot returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with soil from Jerusalem which he poured over the cemetery grounds.

As a result, the cemetery was the desired burial place for all the local populace. The wars and plagues of the Middle Ages soon filled the grounds with tens of thousands of corpses.

When the cemetery was filled to capacity, the oldest remains were unearthed to be stored in the All Saints Chapel, built in the 14th Century.

It was in 1870 that Frantisek Rint, a woodcarver, began to decorate the chapel from the piles of ancient bones. Among his creations is the coat of arms of the Schwarzenberg family who had bought the Chapel, and a chandelier using every bone in the human body.