27.11.2018: Hallstatt, Austria

November 27, 2018

27.11.2018: Hallstatt, Austria

We ventured to Hallstatt, Austria today by taking a few buses from Salzburg to Bad Ischl and then to the village. Hallstatt is one of Austria's oldest villages, with its main source of wealth being the nearby salt mines, which are some of the world's oldest as well! It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and probably one of the most photographed places in the world; with the picturesque mountains diving directly into the lake, and the houses tucked into the hillside, I don't think there is ever weather bad enough to make this place not look beautiful.

A gloomy day, but I'm sure Hallstatt made it on to more than just my Instagram page.

Case found his new vehicle to feed horses with

Everywhere we've been, there have been shutters that I have to take photos of, and I have a hankering to do paintings of them when we get back.

"The cold never bothered me anyway."

Snoopy Sally

One of the oldest hotels/restaurants in the village (which we had a great lunch at -beef goulash and bread dumplings!) that once owned by famous salt barons.

Hallstatt village square

We just liked the simple wreath on the door.

This is the door to the Charnel House-- a small building behind the Catholic Church that is stacked with over 1,200 human skulls. This is because, due to the location, the village found itself in very short supply of burial grounds. Unfortunately, it wasn't open so we couldn't go inside to see the bones firsthand, but Case tried to get a few pictures.

In the 1700s, the church began digging up corpses to make way for the newly dead. The bodies, which had been buried for only 10 to 15 years, were then stacked inside the charnel house. Once the skeletons were exhumed and properly bleached in the sun, the family members would stack the bones next to their nearest kin. In 1720, a tradition began of painting the skulls with symbolic decorations, as well as dates of birth and death so that the dead would be remembered, even if they no longer had a grave. Of the 1,200 skulls, some 610 of them were lovingly decorated with an assortment of symbols — laurels for valor, roses for love, and so on. The ones from the 1700s are painted with thick dark garlands, while the newer ones, from the 1800s on, bear brighter floral styles.

Though this practice hasn't been utilized since the 1960s, there is a much more recent skull in the charnel house. Beside the cross with a gold tooth is the skull of a woman who died in 1983. Her last request was to be put in the Beinhaus (German for charnel house). Her skull was entered into the ossuary in 1995, and it was the very last bone to be placed there.