The Skull Chapel in Czermna, Poland: Who Built It and Why

The chapel's builder was a Czech-born priest whose name appears in several spellings: Wacław Tomaszek in Polish, Václav or Wentzel Tomaschek in Czech and German records. He served as the parish priest of Czermna in the eighteenth century, in the Kłodzko region.

According to the Silesia e-ncyklopedia, the project began in 1776, when human remains came to light near the church bell tower. Tomaszek did not leave them where they lay. With the help of the gravedigger J. Langer and the sacristan J. Schmidt, he collected bones exposed near the church and from burial grounds around the Kłodzko region. The three men cleaned them and began arranging them in a small chapel beside the church.

The work took nearly three decades. Tomaszek kept gathering and placing remains until 1804, the year he died. The Polish Tourism Organization records that he took his inspiration from the Capuchin cemetery in Rome, the bone-decorated crypt now known to visitors as the Capuchin Crypt.

Tomaszek's chapel had more than one purpose, and they fit together. It was an ossuary, a place where bones exposed near the church and gathered from burial grounds could be laid to rest again with dignity. It was a memorial to the people of the region who had died in war and disease. And it was a sermon in bone.

The historian Tadeusz Fitych, writing in the journal *Studia Redemptorystowskie* in 2008, describes the chapel as a catechesis about resurrection: a lesson in Christian faith told through the remains themselves. The bones say that every life ends; the altar and its figures say what the faith believes comes after. Seen that way, the skulls are not decoration for its own sake. They are the dead of the parish and the region, kept close to the church and the living who pray there.

That idea, the skull as a call to remember death and hope for resurrection, runs through a great deal of Christian art. Our story on skulls in Christianity follows it further.

The remains in the Skull Chapel are attributed to people who died in regional wars and epidemics, but the historical accounts differ on which ones.

• The Silesia e-ncyklopedia names victims of the Silesian Wars of 1740 to 1742 and 1744 to 1745, together with victims of eighteenth century cholera epidemics.
• The National Museum in Wrocław connects the remains with the Thirty Years' War, the Seven Years' War and a cholera epidemic in 1680.

The individual people are not named. They are remembered together, as the chapel presents them: people of the region whose bones were gathered and brought to rest together beside their parish church.

The numbers also come as estimates, and each one belongs to the account that gives it. About 3,000 skulls and bones line the walls and ceiling of the chapel itself, according to the Polish Tourism Organization. The crypt beneath is estimated to hold another 20,000 to 30,000 remains, according to the Silesia e-ncyklopedia. The National Museum in Wrocław records an older total of 24,000 skulls and tibias used in the chapel. These figures come from different accounts, so they are best read side by side.

The Kaplica Czaszek is small. Inside, its Baroque interior is covered with skulls and bones across the walls and ceiling.

The altar holds a Baroque crucifix. Two angel figures stand among the remains, one carrying a trumpet and the other holding scales, the trumpet of the resurrection and the scales of judgment. Their Latin inscriptions are commonly translated as "Arise from the dead" and "Go before judgment." Together with the crucifix, they turn the room into the lesson Fitych describes: death, then judgment, then the hope of rising again.

A 1994 article in the Polish newspaper *Gazeta Jarocińska* reported that a display case near the altar held the skull attributed to Father Tomaszek and the skull of the gravedigger Langer, alongside some anatomical specimens. If that is part of what draws you, the chapel's guides can tell you what is displayed today and how the attributions are understood.

Beneath the chapel lies the crypt, with the larger number of remains, the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people whose bones were gathered but not placed on the walls above.

Czermna is often mentioned in the same breath as the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutná Hora, Czechia, and the two have a lot in common. Both are Catholic ossuaries that keep human remains inside a chapel. Their histories, though, are quite different.

At Czermna, a parish priest began the work in 1776, responding to remains exposed from the region's wars and epidemics, and he finished his part within his own lifetime. Sedlec is older and grew in layers. The official Sedlec history explains that it began as part of a medieval Cistercian cemetery complex, and that its bones came from exhumed medieval graves associated with famine, plague and the Hussite wars. Jan Santini-Aichel is associated with its early Baroque arrangement, and František Rint completed a major reorganization in 1870 for the Schwarzenberg family. Sedlec holds the remains of tens of thousands of people and is known for bone decorations such as a chandelier and a coat of arms.

Two other bone chapels often come up alongside them: the Capuchin crypt at Santa Maria della Concezione in Rome, which inspired Tomaszek, and the Chapel of Bones in Évora, the Capela dos Ossos in Portugal. All of them belong to the long Catholic practice of keeping and honoring the bones of the dead, and all of them invite visitors to think about mortality. They were not built for one shared reason, and each has its own community and story. Our tour of ossuaries around the world gathers more of them.

The Skull Chapel is still a place of prayer and remembrance in a working parish, and visits are arranged with that in mind. The details below are as the official Kaplica Czaszek site stated them on October 6, 2026:

• Address: Stanisława Moniuszki 8a, 57-350 Kudowa-Zdrój, Poland.
• Opening: daily, 9:30 to 17:00.
• Visits are guided.
• Prices: 20 zł for adults, 15 zł for seniors aged 65 and over, 12 zł for children and young people aged 6 to 18, and free for children under 6.
• Photography is not allowed inside.

The parish's own price sheet from 2024 lists a different, lower set of prices, says payment is cash only, and explains that admission income supports the repair, conservation and upkeep of the parish's religious buildings. Because these details change, confirm current hours, prices, guide arrangements and photography rules with the official site or the parish before you travel.

Inside, the guidance is simple: these are the remains of real people, gathered by their own parish so they would be cared for. Visitors who treat the chapel as they would any church, quietly and respectfully, are seeing it as it was meant to be seen.

These short answers cover what people most often ask about the chapel.

If the Skull Chapel moved you, the Sedlec Ossuary and the Capuchin Crypt are the two bone chapels most closely tied to its story. For more places where communities have kept their dead in view, read about the Hallstatt bone house and our wider guide to ossuaries around the world.