The skull columns
Silent compositions in cave light — solemnity, not horror.
Kirk — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Totalrandomphotos — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ben Skála, Benfoto — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Kirk — CC BY-SA 3.0
The graveyard closed by Joseph II's 1784 sanitary decree and the crypt faded beneath the paved square — two and a quarter centuries of the city walking unknowing overhead until the 2001 digs. Documenting and restoring took a full decade before the 2012 opening — making it Europe's oldest ossuary and newest museum at once.
Two colours of experience: here the anonymous multitude, collective awe arranged as art — there mummies with names and clothes, the awe of individual faces. Time enough takes both (minutes apart afoot) — the pressed choose by temperament: grand contemplation here, the harder personal encounter there.
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Directly beneath James Square sleep fifty thousand: Europe's second-largest ossuary after Paris — found by accident in 2001 during square works: the labyrinthine cellars of St James's church had been stacked for centuries with bones of its narrow recycled graveyard (the medieval custom: a burial term, then bones raised to the crypt for the next tenant) — plagues and wars condensing them metres deep. Restoration turned horror to solemnity: columns of skulls and bones arranged in silent compositions under dim cave lighting, music written specifically for the place drifting its galleries — the effect contemplative awe, not ghost-house fright: a twenty-minute descent you leave heavier than you entered, in the noble sense. Above you St James itself is a white Gothic jewel — with its famous sculptural prank, the 'shameless man' above the south window: find him outside and you'll understand.
Silent compositions in cave light — solemnity, not horror.
The St James sculptor's prank above the window — find it and understand.
Jakubské náměstí, 602 00 Brno