The Michael's Chapel in Hallstatt holds over twelve hundred human skulls, many of them painted with delicate flowers, wreaths, and crosses. Because the local cemetery was small, bodies were exhumed after ten to fifteen years to make room for new arrivals. The bones were cleaned, bleached by the sun, and finally placed here for storage. Families decorated the skulls to memorialize their kin, often marking them with the name and death date of the person, a practice that continued into the twentieth century.
Die Kapelle
religious