Bachkovo Monastery, Bulgaria

The monastery, located in the Rhodopi Planina Mountains, 11 km south of Asenovgrad in Bulgaria, was founded in 1081 AD by Grigori and Apazi Pakuriani having been granted control over the land by the Byzantine emperor Alexios Komnenos. It is one of the most ancient monasteries in the Balkans.

The two-storey ossuary, dating to the late 11th century, has a series of historically important murals signed by Yoan Iveropulets (or Yuan the Georgian).

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Cambodia

Memorials to those who lost their lives during the murderous Khmer Rouge regime famously incorporate skulls collected from mass graves. At Tuol Seng Genocide Museum, skulls rest in cabinets having once been used to depict a large map of Cambodia. This was dismantled in 2002 having served as reminder of what had once happened in the building - a former high school which was then used as a high security prison by the Khmer Rouge. 

At Choeung Ek, near Phnom Penh, a clear-sided Buddhist stupa (reliquary) comprised of 5,000 skulls, acts as another reminder to the tragedy that befell the Cambodian people.

Capela dos Ossos

The Chapel of Bones in Evora, Portugal is another monastic ossuary which was built in the 16th century by the Franciscans. Inscribed above the entrance is the solemn reminder to visitors of their own mortality, Nós ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos (Our bones that are here, for yours await). Indeed, skulls are just one symbol associated with memento mori (latin for ‘Remember that you must die’) that remind us human existence is transitory and death is inevitable.

The walls are studded with skulls and bones set into cement and among the 5000 skeletons, there are two desiccated skeletons (one of which, a child) that hang from chains.

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Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo

During the 16th century the Capuchin monks of Palermo, Sicily discovered during an exhumation of one of their brethren, that the body they were disinterring had somehow become mummified. This inspired the monks to mummify one of their recent dead - a Brother Silvestro - and to put the body on public display. 

Some local families began to ask for the same treatment of their deceased loved ones and the catacombs soon began to fill with various mummified bodies in a variety of poses and dress. The process of mummification: the dead were laid out within the catacombs in order to dehydrate. After this, the bodies were washed with vinegar and were either embalmed or sealed in glass cases.

When the process was completed, they were dressed and the placed on display in the catacombs. Velasquez is a famous resident and the catacombs themselves are separated into sections so that there are areas for women, men, children, priests. Even professional occupations are segregated into different sections.

In 1881, following the passing of a law by the Italian government, the monks were prevented from interring people although in 1920, the body of Rosalia Lombardo was given special permission to be placed in the catacombs. Rosalia, who was two-years-old when she died, was embalmed by a local doctor and her glass-covered remains are often referred to as the Sleeping Beauty. 

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Fontanelle Cemetery, Naples

The practice of interring the dead at Fontanelle Cemetery, located in a hillside cave system in the Materdei region of Naples, began in the early 1500s. In 1656, the caves were used as a mass burial ground following an outbreak of the plague. Sometime during the 17th century, floods washed a good number of the bodies down the hill and into the streets. The remains were re-interred and the caves were a mass of jumbled body parts. 

In 1872, a Father Gaetano Barbati oversaw the disinterring of Fontanelle’s remains and began cataloguing the numerous body parts which were then placed in piles, boxes and racks. Shortly after this, a following sprang up of people referred to as the ‘cult of devotion to the skulls’. These people would adopt skulls, even naming them. The adopted skulls were cleaned regularly and were offered prayers, flowers and candles in the hope that this devotion towards the nameless dead would help speed up their passage through purgatory, onto heaven. 

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Hallstatt Beinhaus

Hallstatt’s  Beinhaus (Bone House) was a grim solution to a grave problem. The limited space in Hallstatt’s Roman Catholic churchyard meant that a rotation system had to be introduced for burials. The charnel-house is now a repository for the skull and bones of those who had been exhumed in order to make room for others. While there are nearly 1200 skulls in the Beinhaus, some 600 or so have been decorated with the deceased’s name, birth and death dates. Male skulls have ivy motifs: female skulls, roses. Exhumations ceased during the 60s (coinciding with the wider acceptance of cremation) but the Beinhaus still endures. 

Panoramic view of the Beinhaus

Holy Trinity Church, Rothwell

The 13th century crypt at Rothwell’s Holy Trinity Church, Northamptonshire holds the remains of 1500 individuals, some of whom may have been interred into the crypt in around 1580, when a hospital was built on an old burial ground. Skulls are displayed on shelves around the crypt’s walls while the thigh bones are kept in stacks within the middle of the crypt.

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Niš, Skull Tower

In 1809, after defeating the Serbian insurrection army at the battle on Cegar Hill, the Turkish pasha and commander of the town of Niš ordered a tower to be built to house the skulls of 952 Serb soldiers. Their scalps, stuffed with cotton, were then sent on to Constantinople to the Sultan, Mahmud II.

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