The Empire of Death
A Cultural History
of Ossuaries and
Charnel Houses

Paul Koudounaris
2011

‘This is not a book about the macabre or death. It is a book about beauty and salvation.’

‘The idea for the book was born in the reception area of a Czech hostel. I had spent a day in Melnik, where I visited an extraordinary charnel house in the crypt under the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul. It was gritty and dirty – decidedly not sanitized for tourists – but the arrangements of the bones showed genius, not just in formal artistic principles, but also in their understanding of philosophy and theology.’

Photographs of charnel houses and ossuaries by Paul Koudounaris
empiredelamort.com

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On le met en relation avec The Dead (2010) de JACK BURMAN (on en parlait ici) et The Ossuary (1970) de JAN ŠVANKMAJER (ici).