Skull Chapel in Czermna, Ossuary chapel in Kudowa-Zdrój, Poland.
The Skull Chapel in Czermna is a small brick building in Kudowa-Zdrój, Poland, where walls and ceiling are lined with around 3000 human skulls arranged in patterns. Beneath the floor, a crypt holds another 21000 skeletal remains, making the site one of the largest bone repositories in Europe.
A Czech priest named Václav Tomášek built the structure between 1776 and 1784 to gather and honor the bones of victims from the Silesian wars and repeated cholera outbreaks. After his death in 1804, his own skull was placed on the altar alongside those of his helpers, where they remain visible today.
The name links to a central European tradition of bone houses where communities gathered the remains of their dead in sacred spaces. Visitors enter a room where faith and mortality meet, and the arrangement of skulls follows a devotional logic meant to remind the living of their own passage through time.
The building sits about 130 kilometers southwest of Wrocław in a quiet part of town and is easily reached by car or regional bus. Audio guides in Polish, Czech and German help navigate the visit, and opening times change with the season, so checking ahead saves time.
The front of the altar holds the skulls of the priest and his two gravediggers, who spent eight years together collecting bones from scattered burial sites. Some skulls still show visible traces of violence, including cuts and bullet holes from the wars of the 18th century.
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