The ducal crypt of Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral (Stephensdom), is resting place to the organs and viscera of princes, queens and emperors. From Atlas Obscura’s article on the crypts of the cathedral: Along with some bodies and hearts, over 60 jars of imperial intestines rest in the ducal crypt, including one containing Hapsburg Queen Maria Teresa’ s sovereign stomach. Not long ago, one of the seals on the jar broke, leaking 200 year-old visceral fluid onto the floor. The stink was apparently so awful that it took a day or two before someone was willing to go down and address the situation. In 1735, Vienna experienced an outbreak of the bubonic plague. In an effort to keep the Black Death at bay, the numerous cemeteries surrounding the Stephensdom and the charnel house (a building for storing stacked bones) were emptied, and thousands of bones and rotting corpses were thrown down into the pits dug in the floor of the crypt. The downside to this arrangement was that the smell of the catacombs would occasionally waft up into the church and make religious services impossible. To combat the unfortunate smell, as well as make room for more bodies, a few unlucky prisoners were lowered into the pits where they were forced to scrub the rotting flesh off the plague-ridden and disordered bodies, snapping and breaking the skeletons down to individual bones, and stacking them into neatly ordered rows, skulls on top. It seems that they never finished the job—to this day, one can still find sections of the crypt scattered with piles of disorganized bones and deteriorating coffins. Image Source: pkingDesign, on Flickr.

The ducal crypt of Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral (Stephensdom), is resting place to the organs and viscera of princes, queens and emperors. From Atlas Obscura’s article on the crypts of the cathedral:

Along with some bodies and hearts, over 60 jars of imperial intestines rest in the ducal crypt, including one containing Hapsburg Queen Maria Teresa’ s sovereign stomach. Not long ago, one of the seals on the jar broke, leaking 200 year-old visceral fluid onto the floor. The stink was apparently so awful that it took a day or two before someone was willing to go down and address the situation.

In 1735, Vienna experienced an outbreak of the bubonic plague. In an effort to keep the Black Death at bay, the numerous cemeteries surrounding the Stephensdom and the charnel house (a building for storing stacked bones) were emptied, and thousands of bones and rotting corpses were thrown down into the pits dug in the floor of the crypt. The downside to this arrangement was that the smell of the catacombs would occasionally waft up into the church and make religious services impossible.

To combat the unfortunate smell, as well as make room for more bodies, a few unlucky prisoners were lowered into the pits where they were forced to scrub the rotting flesh off the plague-ridden and disordered bodies, snapping and breaking the skeletons down to individual bones, and stacking them into neatly ordered rows, skulls on top. It seems that they never finished the job—to this day, one can still find sections of the crypt scattered with piles of disorganized bones and deteriorating coffins.

Image Source: pkingDesign, on Flickr.