If you are an art and architecture fanatic, then "the Bone Church" in Czech Republic awaits you. The Gothic church looks like an ordinary place of worship, but inside, one can find hundreds of thousands of bones bleached and carved.

The story behind the church's birth sounds like a movie. It goes all the way back to 1278 when the King of Bohemia sent the abbot of Sedlec Cistercian Monastery to Jerusalem and brought back some "sacred soil" to spread across the church cemetry. The cemetary became one of the popular places to be buried in the region.

In the 14 th century, a deadly plague swept through Europe killing about 30,000 people. They are said to be buried in this cemetry. The community started to construct the Gothic church in the 15 th century, thus many bones were moved and stacked in pyramids in the ossuary beneath the new building. And it wasn’t until 1870 when the church hired Francis Rint, a local wood carver, to ‘create something beautiful’ from the piles of bones.

One of the most intriguing art is the bone chandlier which is made up of almost every bone in the human body; the ossuary displays two large bone chalices, four baroque bone candelabras, six enormous bone pyramids, two bone monstrances, a family crest in bone, and skull candle holders.

Reports say that Rint decorated the ‘holy space’ with bleached and carved bones. He made chains of skulls to stretch across entryways, with chalices and crosses constucted from hip bones and femurs. There is the amazing Schwarzenberg coat of arms, which includes a raven pecking at the severed head of a Turk-all made of human bone.

Radka Krejci, Corporate Department Manager for the Sedlec Ossuary says regular masses are held in the upper chapel and lower chapel of the church. He said concerts are also held inside the church. “The ossuray is one of the biggest tourist attractions in the Czech Republic and the most visited in the Central Bohemian region.” Krejci explained that its still a Roman Catholic Church surrounded by a functuonal cemetery.

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However, the local community is not very happy about the attention that the church has been getting. A local resident said they have a family grave right in front of the entrance to the Church of All Saints in Sedlec. “Its a place where we can go and connect with our family that are no longer with us. I am glad tourists are interested in seeing it, but I would like them to understand this," the person said, reports Fox2Now.

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