A central European phenomenon
Every town raised one after its epidemic — they stand in Prague, Vienna and dozens of towns.
Stanislav Ferzik — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Richard Mortel from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — CC BY 2.0 · Gerd Eichmann — CC BY 4.0 · Gerd Eichmann — CC BY 4.0
St Barbara's Gothic cathedral first, then the Sedlec Ossuary, the Cathedral of Our Lady at Sedlec, and the UNESCO-listed old town. The town was the second richest in the Kingdom of Bohemia thanks to its silver mines, and that wealth built everything you see. A full day covers it.
Plague struck central Europe in successive waves into the eighteenth century, killing a large share of a town's people within weeks. After each wave receded, the town council vowed a column in thanks, decorated with saints such as Roch and Sebastian who were invoked against epidemics. The custom was essentially Catholic, which is why the columns cluster across Austria, Bohemia and Bavaria and thin out further north.
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A baroque column in the centre of Kutná Hora, raised between 1713 and 1715 after a plague epidemic that killed around a thousand of the town's inhabitants. Plague columns are a widespread central European phenomenon: after each epidemic, towns raised a column as a vow and in thanks for survival, decorating it with the saints invoked against disease. This one is the work of the sculptor František Baugut, carrying saints' figures above and carved scenes below. The heavier truth about these columns is that they are not ornament but memorials: each one means thousands of dead in a small town, and that the survivors found nothing to do but carve in stone. The column stands in a small square minutes from St Barbara's Cathedral and the old town. There are no tickets and no hours — you pass it moving between Kutná Hora's sights, and it earns a short stop for what it represents.
Every town raised one after its epidemic — they stand in Prague, Vienna and dozens of towns.
The column means thousands of dead, not simply baroque carving in a square.
Fifteen minutes on your way between Kutná Hora's sights.
Šultysova, central Kutná Hora