Tour 10  Kutna Hora + Ossuary

We invite you on a day trip to Kutna Hora, the Pearl on the UNESCO Neclace. The rise of Kutna Hora (Kuttenberg) is traditionally connected with the development of the monetary business in the 13th century, however, the beginnings actually date all the way back to the end of the 10th century. Around 1300, King Vaclav II issued a new mining law (Ius regale montanorum), which stipulated the royal rights over mining silver and minting, established a united coin and concentrated minting in Kutna Hora. The town developed with great rapidity, and at the outbreak of the Hussite Wars in 1419 was the second most important town in Bohemia after Prague, having become the favourite residence of several Bohemian kings. It was here that, on 18 January 1409, Wenceslas IV signed the famous Decree of Kutna Hora, by which the Czech university nation was given three votes in the elections to the faculty of Prague University as against one for the three other nations. Along with the rest of Bohemia, Kutna Hora passed to the Habsburg monarchy of Austria in 1526. In 1546, the richest mine was severely flooded. The mines were abandoned at the end of the 18th century.

The historical centre of the Urban Conservation Area, together with Gothic St. Barbora’s Church and the Church of the Assumption of Mary in Sedlec has been entered into the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1995. Other interesting sights are Italian Court, a palace and currently museum of coin minting, and Ossuary.

The Ossuary is a Roman Catholic chapel, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints, part of the former Sedlec Abbey in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutna Hora. The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, whose bones have, in many cases, been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel.The ossuary is among the most visited tourist attractions of the Czech Republic.