A silver-mining town that rivalled Prague in the fourteenth century, with a Gothic cathedral built by miners and a chapel decorated with the bones of forty thousand people.
Why it exists
Silver was found here in the late thirteenth century and Kutná Hora became, briefly, one of the richest places in Europe. The Prague groschen, minted here, was a currency used across central Europe for two centuries. At its peak the town rivalled Prague in size and wealth and the kings of Bohemia depended on it.
The silver ran out in the sixteenth century and the town stopped. Which is why it is now a small provincial place with two extraordinary buildings in it, both UNESCO-listed.
The Sedlec Ossuary
The one everybody comes for, and it is worth being clear about what it is.
An abbot brought back soil from Golgotha in 1278 and scattered it in the cemetery here, which made it the most desirable burial ground in central Europe. The Black Death and the Hussite wars filled it. When the graveyard was reduced, the bones of somewhere between 40,000 and 70,000 people were stored in the chapel.
In 1870 a woodcarver, František Rint, was employed to arrange them. What he produced is a chandelier containing every bone in the human body, four bone pyramids, a coat of arms of the Schwarzenberg family with a bone raven pecking a bone Turk’s eye, and his own signature in bones on the wall.
It is not gruesome so much as strange — a memento mori executed with genuine craft. Photography is restricted and there is a small charge for it; the site has tightened rules after years of people taking selfies with skulls, and the restrictions are fair.
The Cathedral of the Assumption next door, a Gothic-baroque church by Santini, is superb and almost empty of visitors.
St Barbara’s Cathedral
At the other end of the town, and the better building.
Begun in 1388 and funded by the miners’ guilds rather than a bishop, which is why it is dedicated to Barbara, the patron of miners, and why its frescoes show men at the coalface and in the mint rather than saints. Peter Parler’s workshop began it; the roof is a set of three tent-like peaks unlike anything else.
The approach along the Jesuit terrace, lined with baroque statues, with the cathedral ahead and the valley below, is one of the finest architectural approaches in the country.
The silver mine
The Czech Museum of Silver runs a tour that takes you into a medieval mine shaft — white coat, helmet, lamp, and 250 metres of tunnel that is genuinely narrow in places. Booked in advance, and not for the claustrophobic.
Getting there
Train from Prague main station to Kutná Hora hlavní nádraží, about 55 minutes, roughly hourly.
The main station is three kilometres from the town centre, which catches people out. From there, a local shuttle train runs to Kutná Hora město, or there are buses, or it is a walk.
Sedlec and the ossuary are a ten-minute walk from the main station. The cathedral is at the far end of the town. Doing Sedlec first and working toward the cathedral is the efficient order.
Day tours from Prague are widely sold and handle the transport, usually combined with a brewery or Český Šternberk.
Practical
A combined ticket covers the ossuary, the Sedlec cathedral and St Barbara’s, and is worth it.
Allow a full day if going independently. Half a day is possible and rushed.
The town has good, cheap Czech restaurants and almost no queue at any of them.
More Day Trips
Český Krumlov
A medieval town inside a hairpin bend of the Vltava, with the second-largest castle in the country and a baroque theatre that still uses its original stage machinery.
Terezín
A Habsburg garrison town the Nazis turned into a ghetto and a transit camp, and then presented to the Red Cross as a model settlement. An hour from Prague and very hard.