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Death may be decades or just seconds away, and all of us must face it.

But few of us will have our ribs made into macabre chandeliers, our femurs neatly stacked into geometrical shapes or our craniums incorporated into religious artwork for tourists to admire.

That is the fate of exhumed skeletons on display at the Sedlec Ossuary, a Catholic chapel about 45 miles east of Prague, capital of the Czech Republic. There, the church interior has been packed with decoratively arranged bones of at least 40,000 human beings — roughly twice the population of the nearby town of Kutná Hora.

The mere existence of the ossuary — erected as part of a Cistercian monastery in 1142 — is morbid, bizarre and unique, and makes for a memorable day trip from Prague.

On a gray winter morning, I arrived at Kutná Hora’s main train station. After I’d passed a couple of vacant buildings — shells of structures that must have looked modern when they were built in the 1960s — my walk began to offer up some spookiness: a sweet, sickly smell wafted from what turned out to be a Phillip Morris tobacco processing plant, behind which stood the early-Gothic Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

I turned into a quiet neighborhood off the main thoroughfare. There I caught a glimpse of my destination. From a distance, it probably could pass for an average stone church, but as I came closer, it became more obvious that this place was far from ordinary.

The wall surrounding the ossuary and its graveyard is decorated with stone skull-and-crossbones sculptures. The towers of the All Saints Church, in the same building, are topped with skulls instead of crosses. A crude mosaic contained the same design in the sidewalk directly in front of the entrance. Together these created a ghoulish trademark, simultaneously leading the way for tourists interested in the occult and frightening off curious schoolchildren.

An information sheet available at the ticket counter answers some basic questions:

• Why were there so many bones at the chapel?

The graveyard was sprinkled with sacred soil brought from Jerusalem by an abbot in the Middle Ages, so the dying traveled from across Europe to be buried here.

• When were the bones exhumed and arranged?

In 1511, a half-blind monk was given the task of gathering the bones to make room for more bodies in the graveyard. He began piling the bones into pyramids and they were rearranged many times by his successors.

• How long has the chapel had its unusual ornamentation?

In the 1870s, a local woodcarver named František Rint was hired to decorate the inside of the chapel with the human material.

(For those who want to study up on the details before their visit, the bone church has its own Web site, www.kostnice.cz, with several language options including English.)

As I walked down the dozen or so steps into the main chamber of the ossuary — past Rint’s signature cobbled together in bones, between two huge bone pyramids and beneath an enormous bone chandelier that supposedly includes every bone in the human body — I felt as though I were entering uncharted spiritual territory. For the number of remains on display, there is relatively little space — the chamber is perhaps the size of a basketball court.

Regardless of whether visitors feel frightened, spiritual or claustrophobic, there’s no mistaking that it is a place for the dead, not the living.

Many of the bones come from victims of the great plagues of the 14th century. In such epidemics it was common for corpses to be taken to the edge of towns, dumped by the dozens into open pits and covered with soil. The ossuary in Sedlec — just a mile or so from silver-rich Kutná Hora, which at the time rivaled Prague for dominance of Bohemia — served a similar function.

Other bones are from soldiers who died fighting in the Hussite Wars, a fierce religious conflict that tore through Bohemia between 1419 and 1434. A couple of skulls on display are missing sections — quite possibly blast holes from what was Europe’s first major conflict to feature hand-held firearms.

I wondered if the souls of the people whose bones now adorn the ossuary cursed those who used their remains for decorative purposes. Or if they haunt those who have turned the chapel into a tourist attraction complete with replica skulls for sale and a snack stand to serve the tourist-bus crowds.

For their part, the residents of Sedlec accept the ossuary for what it is, sacred. The hallowed graveyard is still used today. And the upper level functions as a fairly simple chapel.

After examining the bones, I made my way back to the ticket counter, where the clerk, a friendly middle-aged woman, was studying an English coursebook — perhaps in the hopes of better serving the English-speaking curiosity-seekers who make their way to Sedlec.

We talked a bit about the ossuary’s relationship to the town, and eventually I asked the question that had been troubling me since I had arrived: "Isn’t it strange working in a place like this? Do you like this job?" I asked.

"I used to work for the post office," she said.

Now that must have been horrifying.

Nathan Saunders is a freelance writer, translator and English teacher based in Berlin. You can contact him at nathan.saunders@yahoo.com.

Getting there

Unless you’re planning to hop across the border from Germany as part of a day or weekend trip, consider making Prague the home base for your visit to the Czech Republic.

You can fly to Prague and to other destinations in the Czech Republic with Czech Airlines. Train and bus connections make less expensive alternatives. Low cost carriers have not as yet infiltrated the country’s airports.

From Germany, Deutsche Bahn (www.bahn.de) offers reasonable fares to Prague’s two largest train stations, hlavní nádrazí (main station) and Holešovice. Second-class, round-trip tickets from Stuttgart (eight hours) or Munich (six hours) cost about $150; better deals are available from Berlin for about $80 (4½ hours) or Dresden for about $60 (two hours).

Traveling by bus is the cheapest alternative. A number of coach lines run comfortable buses to Prague’s Florenc bus station overnight; check with your local travel agent for the best deal in your area.

Getting around

Deciphering the train schedules can be a bit tricky at first, but the Czech Republic has good regional transit links, including to Kutná Hora. Several direct trains leave for Kutná Hora from Prague hlavní nádrazi every day, although note that it might be faster to switch trains in Kolín.

Unless you can speak Czech, it’s easiest to plan your trip online. Timetables with fares can be viewed and printed at www.vlak.cz. Tickets can be bought at the station or on the train for an additional fee; a round-trip ticket from Prague to Kutná Hora costs about $12 and takes a little over an hour each way.

Where to stay

If you’re looking for something quaint and you want to spend the night in Kutná Hora, there is a range of options: be sure to see the tourism office’s online directory (in English, Czech and German) at www.kh.cz.

Consider Penzión U Kata (meaning "The executioner’s hotel," according to its Web site, www.ukata.cz) on the east side of town and offering doubles for about $45.

However, most of the country is a reasonable day trip from Prague, and the capital’s variety of lodging choices — even if they aren’t as affordable as they once were — makes it a logical home base for exploring the rest of the country. In the city center there are Best Western, Ibis and other chain hotels — but be prepared to pay Western Europe prices to the tune of $100 per night or beyond.

If you’re going on a budget, you might want to stay outside the capital or look into Hostelling International ( www.hihostels.com ); in the winter you should be able to find a few options from $20 per person per night.

Currency

As of this writing, $1 is worth about 19 Czech crowns (koruna).

Bone church details

According to its Web site, the the Sedlec Ossuary is open daily in October from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.; November through March from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.; and April to September from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. It is closed only on Dec. 24.

Entrance fees are 50 Czech crowns (about $3) for adults; 30 Czech crowns for students. There are additional fees for taking photos or shooting video.

Contact the ossuary by telephone at (+420) (0) 327 561 143 (vicarage) or (+420) (0) 728 125 488. Its e-mail address is info@kostnice.cz ; its Web site, www.kostnice.cz , has an English option.

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