This is Randi Hacker with another Postcard from Abroad from the KU Center for East Asian Studies and Kansas African Studies.

Just east of Prague, is the Czech Republic’s “Bone Church,” a famous destination for pilgrims and a preferred burial site for Central European aristocracy. Centuries of wars and plagues led to the practice of exhuming old graves to make room for new ones. Piles of bones from 40,000 corpses accumulated until, as legend has it, a monk went mad and began making candelabras out of the bones. More accurately, in 1870, the Schwarzenberg family hired a woodcarver to create an osteo-art: fantastic formations from the skeletal remains — chains of skulls, chalices of hipbones and a sprawling chandelier that incorporates every bone in the human body. Macabre? Maybe, but I wonder what it would bring on E-Bay.

With thanks to Adrienne Landry for this text, from the KU Center for East Asian Studies, this is Randi Hacker. Wish you were here.