Ossuaries

Each of these hand-painted wooden boxes, which date to between the 16th and 19th centuries, contains a genuine human skull.

This 11th-century Greek monastery has renowned mosaics and relics of a brutal past.

This ossuary is more than five centuries old and is heralded as one of the finest in Switzerland.

Remains of the lost church hide beneath this Spanish Parliament building.

This overlooked, beautiful convent hides an original Hieronymus Bosch among its many treasures.

Under a church hides a forgotten 13th-century ossuary containing the remains of around 2,500 people.

The skulls and bones of thousands of soldiers line the walls of this small Italian chapel.

The bones of some 7,000 soldiers killed in the historic Battle of Solferino are stored here.

For centuries no one knew there were hundreds of bones and precious artwork hidden beneath this Swiss church.

At the crypt of St. Mary of Eulogies and the Dead you are left alone to ponder mortality among piles of skulls.

Underneath this small church are 15,000 bones, arranged by an obsessive academic.

A 1,000-year-old church holds the bones of the Christian martyrs who died hiding inside it.

The name doubles as an appropriate adjective for this small ossuary.

A graveyard and memorial chapel for victims of leprosy.

The mystery of the Putim Ossuary involves a tricorn hat.

In 1830, cemetery workers in Cham unearthed a chamber housing thousands of skeletal remains from the 13th century, which can still be viewed today.