Skull Chapel

The Skull Chapel is an ossuary chapel placed within the Czermna district of Kudowa, a city in Klodzko County, Lower Silesia and Poland. Built in last area of the 18th century on the border of the then Prussian County of Glatz, the temple serves as a mass grave with heaps of skulls and skeletal remains adorning its interior walls as well as ground, ceiling and foundations. The Skull Chapel is the simplest such monument in Poland, and considered one of six in Europe. The chapel changed into constructed in 1776 by Bohemian neighborhood parish priest Vaclav Tomasek.

It is the mass grave of those who died at some stage in the 30 Years’ War 1618 to 1648 three Silesian Wars 1740 to 1763, in addition to of individuals who died because of cholera epidemics, plague, syphilis and hunger. Together with sacristan J. Schmidt and grave digger J. Langer, father Tomasek who became stimulated via the Capuchin cemetery whilst on a pilgrimage to Rome accrued the casualties bones, wiped clean and put them inside the chapel within 18 years. Walls of this small, baroque church are full of 3000 skulls, and there are also bones of some other 21000 people interred inside the basement.