During our time in Prague, we took one day from sightseeing in the city to visit Kutná Hora, another town in the area with some interesting tourist attractions.
Getting There
There are guided tours offered from Prague, but it sounded pretty easy to do it on our own, so we took that route. We figured out that there was a train leaving from the main Prague train station at 10, so we headed over there that morning and were able to secure a ticket. There were quite a few other tourists doing the same thing! The ride to the main station in Kutná Hora took about an hour.
Sedlec Ossuary
Our first stop was at the hard-to-believe ossuary in the suburb of Sedlec. Apparently the surrounding cemetery became very overcrowded during the Black Death, so they decided to store the bones of tens of thousands of people in this chapel. A woodcarver hired to arrange the bones used them to make quite a few amazing creations. Probably the most impressive were the chandelier with at least one of each bone in the body and the coat of arms of the local noble family.
- The chandelier
- The Schwa
- Note the raven pecking out the eyeball
- Signature of the artist in finger bones
St. Barbara’s Cathedral
After a nice lunch at a restaurant in town, we headed out to this very impressive UNESCO-listed cathedral. We thought that the exterior was pretty magnificent, especially the spires. Kutná Hora was a silver-mining center, so there were also some interesting older frescoes showing scenes from mining life.
Old Town
We also enjoyed walking around the cobblestone streets of the old town of Kutná Hora. We were impressed by their plague column and some of the other architecture.
Heading Home
Unfortunately, we had to catch our train back to Prague at 5, so we didn’t have time to see all of the sights that Kutná Hora has to offer. We’ll just have to go back!
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