Description of the attraction
The Chapel of Skulls is a sacred monument located in Czermna in Lower Silesia. It is located about one kilometer from the center of Kudowa-Zdroj by the river valley.
The chapel was built in 1776-1804 by a local parish priest from the Czech Republic, Vaclav Tomasek. One day in 1776, on a hillside near the bell tower, a priest accidentally stumbled upon a human skull with bones. He called the undertakers. Together they dug up a huge amount of human bones. It was the mass grave of the victims of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), the victims of the three Silesian Wars (1740-1763), as well as people who died during an outbreak of cholera in the 17th century.
Father Vaclav Tomasek decided to collect all the bones, clean them, bleach them and put them in the chapel. This is how the idea of creating a chapel of skulls was born. Construction work began in 1776; in addition to Vaclav Tomasek, Leopold von Leslie took part in the creation of the chapel.
A small Baroque chapel is set on a square base and is located between the Church of Bartholomew and the free-standing bell tower.
The bones were collected for another 20 years throughout the area. Work on the interior of the chapel continued until 1804. The walls of this small church are filled with 3,000 skulls, as well as the bones of 21,000 people buried in the building's basement. Vaclav Tomasek himself died immediately after the completion of construction work. His skull is located in the center of the building on the altar.
This is the only monument of its kind in Poland.
