15th October
Also visited Brno Ossuary under the Church of St. James which has been in existence since the beginning of the 13th century. The ossuary beneath the church was quickly filled, largely due to the common plague and cholera which wiped out most of the city in the 18th century.
In 1784, the church cemetery was closed on hygiene grounds and the area around the church paved over and the location of the ossuary was forgotten. In 2001, during repairs to St. James Square, the ossuary was rediscovered.
It has been estimated that more than fifty thousand people were buried there meaning that the Brno Ossuary is second only in Europe to the Paris catacombs.
I found it impossible to comprehend the amount of people’s remains that filled those catacombs. It was a sobering experience, thinking about all those people and the lives that they had led.
