Hallstatt Charnel House

The Beinhaus in Hallstatt occupies a tiny chapel beside the Saint Michael Church, distinguished by a wall of over one thousand two hundred skulls stacked in neat, sun-bleached rows. Because the local cemetery offered so little room for the dead, bodies were exhumed after ten or fifteen years to make space for new arrivals. Gravediggers cleaned and whitened the bones, often painting flowers or crosses on the foreheads to honor the deceased, turning the cramped space into a silent, communal garden of remains.