One of the Czech Republic's most morbid and photographed chapels known as the "Bone Church" in Sedlec will be banning photographs of its macabre displays.
Chapel director Radka Krejci told the Czech news agency CTK that people are taking inappropriate photos and desecrating the sanctity of the human remains on display.
Selfies with the deceased are not considered to be in good taste.
Sedlec Selfie: There are 40,000 human skeletons on display. Photo / Supplied
Sedlec's bizarre ossuary is an assortment of 40,000 human skeletons is a popular tourist attraction. Human remains and skulls are used to create everything from chandeliers to an ornate heraldic Schwarzenberg coat of arms. It was commissioned in the 1870s as a way to create some remains of into order and create something of a grizzly tourist attraction.
The Czech chapel of bones is Sedlec worries that tourist selfies aren't respectful. Photo / Supplied
The artist behind the project František Rint even signed his work with a mosaic made of an assortment of bones - including vertebrae and tiny digits from fingers and toes. However, the current group parishioners would ask you to, kindly, refrain from taking selfies with the skulls.
Death metal: Parishioners worry the selfies aren't respecting the 40,000 skeletons on display. Photo / Supplied
While the bone collection first gained attention in the late 19th century, there is a new generation of tourists – almost invariably wearing death metal t-shirts – who have begun posing for photos with the piles of bones. Instagram is a testament to this.
The sacred and historically sensitive sites of Europe are getting tougher on tourist behaviour and photo etiquette.
Gothic romance: The ornate ossuary was arranged as a macabre tourist attraction in the 1870s. Photo / Supplied
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of the Nazi concentration camp in Poland has already had to come up with a policy towards selfie-centric tourists visiting the highly sensitive site.
While the museum has outlined that selfies at the Holocaust site are frowned upon, they have to be aware that social norms are changing.
Bones in focus: The Czech chapel wants to ban selfies. Photo / Supplied
"We have to be careful not to judge good people," Pawel Sawicki. "For a generation of teenagers, this is the language they use."
Sawicki a press officer for the museum says he is hesitant to judge those seen taking selfies at the concentration camp. For a new generation of visitors the selfies are a sign of compassion and the connection they feel towards the site. "You can see from the caption that people are showing the memorial was important to them," he told Traveller.com.au.
The Gothic appeal of the chapel has chimed with a certain type of visitor. Photo / Supplied
The painted Sistine Chapel ceiling in the Vatican City has banned photography outright, while London's Westminster Abbey has installed signs asking visitors to refrain from taking pictures.
Instead the famous Cathedral asks them to contemplate the building and generations of worship it contains, without the distraction of selfies.
