THE OSSUARY
Good-bye.
Do you have a 20-haler coin?
You don't have 20 haleru?
Ninety haleru
Thank you.
And you will take it.
This picture. For 90.
This is the Schwarzenberg one.
Fifty-five plus five is 60-
One, two, three-
I'll tell you,
I've known that about myself
I have to be able to do it all
I'm a pensioner
worth all the money
This is Schwarzenberg's coat of arms...
the monstrance by the main altar.
Ninety haleru
No, no, because
you'll go home again.
The return trip is arranged-
I'm starting the tour now!
Please, teacher,
bring them over here!
Yes, this is the church,
this is the mass grave-
- You must close this.
- Take your hats off as well.
Hats off, yes.
And quiet!
And please, if you touch a bone,
you'll pay a 50-crown fine!
You are inside the biggest ossuary
in the world...
estimates say there are
about 70,000 skeletons.
These are the bones
from the plague in the year 1318...
when the plague was so bad
in the Czech lands...
that they buried 30,000 people
here in one year.
- Do you know what the plague is, children?
- A disease.
Yes, an infectious disease.
And then there are bones
from the Hussite wars in 1421...
when Kutn Hora was
the first royal city after Prague.
The great cathedral and the cloister
were burned and torn down...
and the Cistercians were mostly killed
Some of them saved themselves by escaping,
and they returned here.
And they began to take the bones
out of these mass graves here.
But since there were so many bones...
they decided to put them here,
in this chapel...
and that this would simply be
a mass grave.
In the year 1511,
a half-blind monk...
organized them into six pyramids,
as in all ossuaries around the world.
Whether in Mlnk or in France,
they are always built in pyramids.
But here, Rint created something
without equal in all the world.
It was just a hundred years ago...
when he was invited
by Count Schwarzenberg of Orlk...
a Czech count, who had an estate here
and a brick factory...
and who donated all his extra funds
to these relics.
So he invited Rimt to work here
with his wife and his children.
Two children just like you.
They had to help drill holes
in the bones and put in wires...
and he stayed here
underground for 10 years.
Here it's worth noticing
that this beautiful chandelier...
is made of all the bones
contained in a human body
Do you know what a dollar is?
An American dollar, have you seen it?
So, they offered us
$100,000 in 1968...
for the chandelier to go to America.
Stand right here on the grave
and look up at it.
See how beautiful it is!
The great ant in it especially is-
Working with wood
he could have fixed this...
but here he tried to use
all the bones in the human body...
and this is the horrific art
that he created out of that.
Look at those legs in the chalices.
What imagination!
What a number of bones!
When you see the pyramids do downstairs-
Think about it,
if the pyramid fell to pieces...
and they asked
each of us individually...
to create something out of it,
we'd probably be totally lost.
I often think, I could fix this or that,
a head here, a bone there...
but to create something by myself,
other than what he did,
really, I come upstairs
and I know nothing at all
Touching costs 50 crowns,
touching the bones.
Each bone is drilled
one to four times...
with a wire pulled through-
Forty cubic meters are buried here,
on the left...
under an iron cross
with the name Schwarzenberg.
He did not use those
for the chapel decorations...
because nobody would fit in here.
On November 2 we have a mass here
for all those who are watching you...
and we honor it as a mass grave.
That's why we don't like it
to be noisy here...
and I especially feel so close to them
after a year and a half here...
that I won't allow them to be hurt.
Lately vandalism has spread
Stupid boys write on the skulls...
replace the bones-
So the other day
I washed them for three hours...
and ballpoint pen marks
cannot be washed off.
50 now there's a fine.
Whoever touches the bones
has to immediately pay 50 crowns.
By the first left bench you see
Schwarzenberg's coat of arms.
It was given to him
when he chased out the Turks in 1658...
and defeated them by the city of Rab.
Rab means raven in Czech...
so a raven made of human bones
pecks out a Turk's eye.
Here, grateful that he'd been paid well
for 10 years and not hurried...
and that his children, the mother
and the whole family were fed...
the grateful Rint made this for him
out of bones.
It is truly a work of art.
And to the left of the coat of arms
you will see two altars...
with bones broken by Hussite arms.
So take a good look at everything.
Don't throw money anywhere.
I am very strict about the that.
Under king Premysl Otakar II...
soil from Mount Calvary, Christ's
crucifixion place, was brought here...
and it was scattered
and foreigners were invited...
mainly Austrians, Belgians,
and Germans...
and the cemetery
was spread over 16 hectares.
We keep finding proof of that.
Two weeks ago,
they were putting in plumbing...
and some college students
from Prague were here...
and they jumped in the ditch
and each took national bones home...
jaws with beautiful teeth,
whole spines-
So children, please.
I am really strict about it.
I am not a guide,
just a replacement here.
But I have grown so close to them
in my year and a half here...
that I won't let them be hurt.
So please be as nice as if you'd gone
with mom to your grandma's grave-
These are mostly from torture,
the plague, the Hussite wars...
so let's be nice to them.
Slowly down.
This is a world rarity,
don't miss anything. Slowly-
Come here, you!
I've warned you once already.
- Do you have 50 crowns?
- Me?
I warned you right there
and you do it again.
Here he pulled on these bones!
Children, you cannot do that,
this is a world rarity...
and you intentionally,
after being warned-
Miss teacher; I washed it
for three hours the other day!
They write on it with ballpoint pens.
I can't wash it off.
It's a mass grave,
if you can't consider it a church.