Side Trip to Kutna Hora

One day we decided to take a trip to Kutna Hora, about 65 km from Prague. At one time it was the second most important town in Bohemia after Prague.
We visited St. Barbara's Cathedral and did a guided tour of an area where they minted coins. Kutna Hora at one time was very rich with silver but that didn't last apparently.
The really, really interesting place was the Ossuary in Sedlec. From what I understand, the abbot from the chapel there made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1278. While there he visited Golgotha and gathered some soil there and put it in a jar that he transported back to Sedlec. He referred to this soil as "Holy Soil" and upon arrival at Sedlec he spread it over the cemetery there. Apparently word got out about the soil at this cemetery being sacred and it became an extremely popular place in central Europe in which to be buried. By 1318 over 30,000 people were buried there. Since the cemetery was getting pretty "full", the bones were dug up in 1511 to make room for new bodies and they were put in a crypt. Years later a wood carver was hired to "decorate" the inside of the chapel with all those bones. Tom was fascinated with this place...I thought it was just plain creepy. It was about as interesting a place as you could ever want to go, but it was still creepy. At least they weren't playing the music to "Dem bones, dem bones....."