DISPUTED CULTURAL
HERITAGE SITIES
KUNSTCAMERA
Kunstkamera has everything from Siamese twins to encephalitis-swollen skulls, and from a giant skeleton to jarred tumours. However, it isn’t for everyone so if you’re easily squeamish you might want to pass. It’s a fascinating museum if a little odd, and old and dusty around the edges.
Interestingly, KunstKamera was the first museum in Russia. It was opened by Peter
the Great in 1727 and is now currently housed inside the Museum of Anthropology
and Ethnography. KunstKamera is now therefore a museum within a museum
which should iron out any confusion for people looking for the KunstKamera
museum – look for the Russian Museum of Ethnography and ye shall find!
True to his name, Peter the Great really was indeed a great man, one of the reasons
he opened KunstKamera was to educate his country about science in order to combat
prejudice. At that time in history people ascribed physical abnormalities or disabilities
to supernatural powers so opening this museum was a way
of raising the awareness of medical conditions that can be
explained scientifically.
His foreward thinking ways were in line with the Enlightenment school of thought,
characterised by intellectual and scientific discovery.
Originating in Western Europe, Enlightenment influenced Tsar Peter after a trip to
Europe in the 17th Century. He used the principles of reason, scepticism and
science to reform Russian Society at the time.
OSSUARY
Known to most as “the Bone Church,” it displays some of the world’s more macabre art. In addition to a splendid bone chandelier composed of almost every bone in a human
body, the ossuary displays two large bone chalices, four baroque bone
candelabras, six enormous bone pyramids, two bone monstrances, a family
crest in bone, and skull candle holders. Festively looping chains of bone are
hung throughout like crepe paper at a birthday party.
Sedlec Ossuary has a long history, beginning in the 13th century when
the Abbot of the Sedlec Monastery (Abbot Henry) brought a handful
of earth back from a journey to the Grave of the Lord in Jerusalem.
He scattered this “holy soil” across the Sedlec cemetery, securing its
place as one of the most desired burial sites for people all over
Bohemia and the surrounding countries.
Everyone wanted to be buried
in that handful of the Holy Land and more than 30,000 were.
But it wasn’tlong before there simply wasn’t enough room for everyone to rest in peace, and the bodies were moved to a crypt to make room for the newly dead.
In 1870, a local woodcarver, František Rint was employed for the dark task of artistically arranging the thousands of bones. Rint came up with the Bone Church’s stunning chandelier, as well as the amazing Schwarzenberg coat of arms, which includes a raven pecking at the severed head of a Turk–all made of human bone.
Rint was responsible for bleaching all of the bones in the ossuary in order to give the room a uniform look. His artist’s signature is still on the wall today–naturally, in his medium of choice, bone.
