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Mělník charnel-house, along with the Sedlec one near Kutná Hora, is one of the biggest in the Czech Republic. It is situated in the crypt under the presbytery of the provost church of Saints Peter and Paul. The church was, within living memory, surrounded by a cemetery, which however wasn’t large enough, especially during the plague epidemics, to accommodate the numerous burials and therefore the gravedigger removed the old bones and piled them in the charnel-house.
Mělník charnel-house was used for this until 1775, when the cemetery by the church was abolished. By a governor’s decree of the 16th of August 1787 all the bones should have been buried. In Mělník this was resolved by walling up the charnel-house windows and entrance. The cemetery was transferred to Saint Ludmila’s church in the suburbs.
Nach seiner Schätzung gibt es hier 10.000 bis 15.000 Menschen, die nicht nur aus Melnik und der nahen Umgebung stammten. Es wurden hier auch Ausländer festgestellt (meistens Sachsen und Schweden), die unweit der Stadt als Soldaten im dreißigjährigen Krieg gefallen sind. Ihre körperliche Überreste wurden später hierher gebracht.
The charnel-house contains the remains of about 10,000 to 15,000 people of different ages, sex and origins, because in the past bones found in different places of Mělník’s surroundings as well as remains from the thirty-years war and other skirmishes were brought to the charnel-house.
Parish of St. Peter and Paul
The monumental Church of St. Peter and Paul in Mělník is one of the oldest churches in the Czech Republic. František Palacký, together with the local cathedral chapter, dates its construction to the time of Princess Emma († 1006), the wife of Boleslav II, Duke of Bohemia, who significantly contributed to the church’s founding in the second half of the 10th century.