Bones and all: Human skull pyramid in Czech chapel fully restored

Experts have completed the two-year restoration of the first of four bone pyramids inside the Kutná Hora Ossuary, a monumental 14th-century chapel decorated with the skeletal remains of thousands of people.

The two-year project to reassemble the 5-meter tall northwestern pyramid was an arduous task, lead restorer Tomáš Král said, speaking to news agency ČTK.

“A large amount of the skeletal material was damaged when the pyramid was previously dismantled, so a lot of the bones were unusable,” Král told reporters on Saturday.

To overcome this challenge, the restoration team developed a special wooden structure to support the bones and distribute the weight across the pyramid's individual floors.

“The original wooden elements did not have a static function; they just determined the shape,” said chief designer Vít Mlázovský. “We had to reduce the load on the bones to prevent them from being crushed.”

The process of repairing the pyramid included brushing, drying, and treating the bones with lime. Glass was installed to allow visitors to observe the reconstruction of the pyramid. Fragments that could not be saved are buried, and no substitute bones or plaster casts will be used as filler.

The pyramids were much larger initially but have shrunk as some bones disintegrated and turned to dust over the centuries. Many were lost due to a lack of maintenance during the communist era. Selfie-seekers also damaged displays in the chapel by carelessly backing into bones or posing with them.

Without intervention in the church’s structure, it could have fallen within 10 years, spokesperson Radka Krejčí told news server Aktualne.cz in 2021 when the reconstruction began. “Pieces of plaster were falling off, and the bone decoration was suffering. Our altars were falling apart; some were even covered with moss,” Krejčí said.

The Kutná Hora Ossuary is undergoing a major CZK 111 million restoration that began in 2014. The work on the bone pyramids is just one component of the ongoing project.

“One pyramid, including the repair of the vault field, costs CZK 21 million,” Král noted.

Despite the construction, the popular tourist site remains open to visitors. In 2022, it welcomed 297,000 guests, down from almost 500,000 in the pre-pandemic year of 2019.

The restoration of the second pyramid in the southwestern field is expected to begin by the end of this year or early 2025, Král said.

The Chapel of All Saints, dating back to the 14th century, is surrounded by an ancient cemetery revered for its sacred soil, purportedly brought from Calvary Hill during the Crusades. Built around 1400, the church features a lower chapel designed to house surplus bones from mass graves and the Hussite Wars.

Renovations in 2018 included restoring the cemetery. The upper church was Baroque-renovated in 1703-1710 by architecht Jan Blažej Santini Aichel. In 1870, woodcarver František Rint adorned the chapel with bones, creating chandeliers and pyramids, showcasing an estimated 40,000 interred remains.

See more photos of the Sedlec Ossuary renovations here.