Cities of the plague dead

Cities that buried their dead faster than they could bless them — the pestilence grounds of Europe. Open the world map to see them plotted.

1. Capela dos Ossos — Évora's Waiting Room

   A · Évora, Alentejo, Portugal — A 16th-century chapel next to Évora's Church of St Francis, lined floor to vault with the bones of some 5,000 people — with a welcome message over the door: 'We bones that are here, for yours we wait.…

2. The Catacombs of Paris

   A · Paris, France — Six million skeletons stacked in old limestone tunnels beneath Paris — the world's largest grave, and a magnet for the lost.…

3. Sedlec Ossuary — The Church of Bones

   A · Kutná Hora, Central Bohemia, Czech Republic — A small chapel beneath a Gothic church where the bones of some 40,000 people were arranged in 1870 into chandeliers, coats of arms and pyramids — by a woodcarver, not a cult.…