Ossuary at the Battle Monument - Dornach, SO, Switzerland - Charnel Chapels, Charnel Houses and Ossuaries on Waymarking.com

"The Battle of Dornach was a battle fought on 22 July 1499 between the troops of Emperor Maximilian I and the Old Swiss Confederacy close to the Swiss village of Dornach. The battle turned into a decisive defeat for Maximilian, and concluded the Swabian War between the Swiss and the Swabian League: it amounted to de facto independence of Switzerland from the Holy Roman Empire, acknowledged by Maximilian in the Treaty of Basel on 22 September." (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The village was completely destroyed, and there were little resources. Only a small part of the fallen was buried in a cemetery. The majority of the several thousand bodies were left on the battlefield. It took a couple of years to recover all the skeletal remains. They were brought to a chapel and later transferred to a new extended pilgrim's chapel dedicated in 1643.

In the late 19th century the chapel was replaced by a memorial for the 400th anniversary of the battle. The neo-gothic sandstone monument had the shape of an archway and contained a pyramid of several hundred skulls in its center. The majority of the bones from the old ossuary were buried on the local cemetery.

In 1949 this monument was replaced by the current one. It is a white stone relief depicting a battle scene. In the right corner of the monument there is a niche behind a display window where about 50 of the remaining skulls where brought in 1954. The majority of them has heavy head injuries.

Active: yes Accessible: yes Admission fee: free Web documentation: [Web Link]

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Date Logged Log   07/30/2023 Seebär visited it