Hallstatt Ossuary

Why go

The Hallstatt Ossuary (Beinhaus) lies in the crypt below St Michael's Chapel in Hallstatt, and the Hallstatt parish describes it on its own site among the parish's churches. The parish's page says about 2,000 skulls rest there, more than 600 of them painted and inscribed, often with the dead person's name, and that skull painting in Hallstatt can be traced back at least to the 18th century. It explains that the cemetery around the parish church was always small, that graves were reopened after a rest period, and that a skull was taken into the ossuary only at the wish of the dead person or their family, which is still possible today. The parish stresses that the ossuary is not a museum but part of a consecrated church space where people still pray, and invites visitors to pause quietly. The chapel above it has an altarpiece of the Archangel Michael overcoming Lucifer.