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High mountains rising from narrow valleys reflected on the water surface. The view squeezed between a salt mountain and vast lake. Underground salt and water world. Mysterious caverns. Hallstatt’s beauty alone would be enough to guarantee it fame.



Everyone who visits Hallstatt in Austria is likely to pay a visit to its Ossuary, more often called Charnel House, or simply Bone House. The Bone House is one of Hallstatt’s treasures. It’s among the last of such places in all of Austria.  Charnel, places of second burials, were once much more common in the Eastern Alps, but they have now largely disappeared. The Bone House in Hallstatt is one of the last, and it has always contained one of the the most remarkable collections of painted skulls, anywhere.



The scene may sound gruesome, but Beinhaus, the bone chapel, has been a regular part of life for residents of Hallstatt for centuries. Located in a village who's location limited any kind of growth, the adjacent cemetery quickly reached capacity. This forced residents to get creative with their burial techniques. Their solution? A bone chapel.

In the 12th century they decided to unearth the bodies that had been buried at least 10-20 years to make room for the newly deceased. They removed the skulls and remaining bones from the graves, cleaned them and bleached them in the sun for several weeks. The resurrected bones were then used to decorate the chapel.

Beginning in the 1720s, artistic designs were painted on the skulls’ as a sign of respect. Placing flowers on the grave was no longer an option so instead, they pressed the tip of a paintbrush to the ivory surface to create pictures of roses, oak leaves, laurel, and ivy. The result is a collection of thousands of artistically painted skulls, stacked neatly in rows by family.