Cemeteries, crypts and other final resting places aren’t usually at the top of people’s list of travel destinations, but some of them are so incredibly bizarre that they have become must-see tourist attractions. Here are the five weirdest burial places on Earth:

5. The Sedlec Ossuary – Kotna Hora, Czech Republic

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Popularly known as the “Bone Church”, the Sedlec Ossuary is an unusual final resting place of between 40,000 to 70,000 people. It was built in 1400, beneath the Church of All Saints to be used as an ossuary for the thousands of skeletons unearthed from the overcrowded cemetery of Sedlec. There’s nothing even remotely bizarre about the chapel, seen from the outside, but once you step inside the ossuary, it’s clear to see why it is considered one of the strangest sacred places in the world.

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The Sedlec Ossuary is artistically decorated with the bones of over 40,000 people. The giant bone chandelier, hanging in the center of the chapel, is by far the most impressive artwork in the Bone Church. It contains at least one of every bone in the human body. Garlands of skulls decorate the entire ceiling and there’s even a Schwarzenberg coat-of-arms made entirely out of human bones.

4. The Merry Cemetery – Sapanta, Romania

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Most cemeteries are places where people go to mourn and pay their respects to the dead, but the Merry Cemetery of Sapanta is nothing like that. Full of brightly-colored wooden crosses, it is a place where thousands of tourists come to be happy and often laugh.

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The Dacians (ancestors of the Romanians) believed they were immortal and death was nothing but the passing to a much better life. At Sapanata this belief is still very much alive and people celebrate it by painting the crosses in bright colors and write funny rhymes about the lives of the dead. The first cross was painted in 1935 and since then, 800 more were added.

3. The Hallstatt Ossuary – Hallstatt, Austria

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Known as the oldest continuously inhabited settlement on Earth, Hallstatt is home to one of the most unusual burial places you’ll ever see. The Hallstatt Ossuary was built in the 12^th century, when the town’s population exceeded 3,000 souls and there was no more space to bury the dead.

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Authorities came up with a “rent-a-grave” system to solve this serious problem. People were allowed to rent a grave for a period of 10 years, after which the skeleton was dug up and the skull removed and left in the sunlight for weeks, until it became white. The skull was the only part placed in the ossuary. The tradition of the painted skulls began much later, in 1790, when families of the deceased started decorating them with flowers as an alternative to placing fresh flowers on their graves. Since 1960 bodies have been mostly cremated, but people can have skulls added to the ossuary, through a special request.

2. Crypt of the Capuchins – Rome, Italy

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Considered one of the creepiest places in Rome, the Crypt of the Capuchins is made up of several tiny rooms, decorated with the bones of over 4,000 Capuchin monks and poor Romans. Because the soil in the crypt was brought from Jerusalem, many of the friars who died between 1528 and 1870 wanted to be buried here.

As the number of bodies grew, it became clear that the only way to accommodate all of them was to dig up the buried skeletons and hang the bones on the walls of the crypt. Various bones are nailed on the walls and ceiling and there are even some skeletons dressed in monk robes.

1. The Hanging Coffins – Sagada, Philippines

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The Igorot tradition of hanging coffins on the sides of unreachable cliffs dates back over 2000 years and although it is a dying custom, it attracts more and more tourists to the Mountain Province, in the Philippines. The Igorot people of old believed the higher their body was laid, the closer they were to heaven.

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This practice also had a more practical reason. Hanging the coffins on the faces of cliffs kept grave-robbers from desecrating their remains and stopped monsoons from washing away the bodies. The elder Igorot carved the coffins themselves, before they died, and their bodies were smoked to better preserve them. The last coffin was hung on a cliff around Sagada, in 2008, but nowadays most people prefer to be buried in the ground.

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