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Many old bones
Jul. 11th, 2016 10:51 pmWhen I wasn't distracted by thinking about D&D today, I went into the catacombs below St. Stephen's Cathedral. It was slightly less impressive than I remembered from the last time I was there, about fifteen years ago, but still pretty cool. First all the coffins of the bishops and dukes etc. I learned that for quite some time Austria's emperors were buried in three pieces: their heart in a silver urn in the crypt below St. Augustin's, the rest of their organs in a copper urn below St. Stephen's, and their embalmed bodies in the Imperial Crypt below the Capuchin Church.
Then the area that used to be a common cemetery, but they had to stop using it after forty years because the smell of the decomposing bodies became so bad that they couldn't even use the church anymore. During that time they buried thousands of bodies there, stacking the coffins up to the ceiling in large rooms that they then bricked up. Every once in a while they had criminals come down and open the coffins, clean the bones, and staple them up like firewood to create more space for new coffins.
Last the plague pit, where they just threw in the bodies because there were too many dead to bury them properly. It was weird to think of an underground cemetery having two floors.
There was also this weird moment of "whoa, these are real bones." Some almost intact skeletons, some wild heaps of bones, a very densely stacked wall of bones with some skulls in it. Real bones of real people, very cool feeling of history becoming more tangible.
At the end of the tour our guide recommended that we don't use the exit - uh, what? - because it was pouring outside, so we left via the entrance. When we'd entered the church half an hour earlier it was very hot and humid, but we hadn't expected heavy rain until the evening. St. Stephen's square was basically empty. I knew I was going to be wet anyway; if my sandals hadn't become so slippery when wet that I was afraid to break my ankles, I would have danced in the square just for fun.
Right now I want to visit all the other crypts and catacombs in the city, plus some of the more notable cemeteries. I probably won't get around to many for some time, but still. Catacombs are cool.
Then the area that used to be a common cemetery, but they had to stop using it after forty years because the smell of the decomposing bodies became so bad that they couldn't even use the church anymore. During that time they buried thousands of bodies there, stacking the coffins up to the ceiling in large rooms that they then bricked up. Every once in a while they had criminals come down and open the coffins, clean the bones, and staple them up like firewood to create more space for new coffins.
Last the plague pit, where they just threw in the bodies because there were too many dead to bury them properly. It was weird to think of an underground cemetery having two floors.
There was also this weird moment of "whoa, these are real bones." Some almost intact skeletons, some wild heaps of bones, a very densely stacked wall of bones with some skulls in it. Real bones of real people, very cool feeling of history becoming more tangible.
At the end of the tour our guide recommended that we don't use the exit - uh, what? - because it was pouring outside, so we left via the entrance. When we'd entered the church half an hour earlier it was very hot and humid, but we hadn't expected heavy rain until the evening. St. Stephen's square was basically empty. I knew I was going to be wet anyway; if my sandals hadn't become so slippery when wet that I was afraid to break my ankles, I would have danced in the square just for fun.
Right now I want to visit all the other crypts and catacombs in the city, plus some of the more notable cemeteries. I probably won't get around to many for some time, but still. Catacombs are cool.
