Looking for a quiet weekend house?

There's a turn-of-the-century property for sale in the rolling Moravian countryside, with soaring ceilings, sculptured marble accents and an airy interior. Asking price: just 150,000 Kč ($6,658).

The catch: This building in Jemnice, south Moravia, is a mausoleum, holding the final remains of seven members of the Pallavicini noble family.

Still, this ghostly history isn't stopping one businessman from ponying up to buy. In fact, he's planning on turning the property into a weekend house, a "recreational facility" where he can relax and maybe hold art exhibitions, said Jemnice Mayor Milan Havlíček.

"We will be holding a vote on the issue in December. If there is support among the town council, then the tomb will be sold to the buyer," he said.

Although the building is a historical site, the town has little choice but to sell it, Havlíček said. The property belongs to the municipality, but the family's descendants had agreed to pay for the upkeep of the 100-square-meter (1,076-square-foot) building. Those payments have been sporadic and dwindling, and Jemnice can no longer bear the financial burden, he said.

"We have asked the Pallavicini family to collect the urns of their ancestors some year and a half ago. Today, the urns are still inside the tomb. We'll make one more effort to contact the family. That's all we can do," said Havlíček.

Crumbling, dilapidated gravesites are a problem across the country, and municipalities often find themselves considering ways to deal with them — including selling them to private buyers.

In some cases, they're simply neglected or abandoned, but sometimes there are no relatives left to tend the graves.

Abandoned over time

This is the case at two cemeteries in Moravia where approximately 400 Sudeten Germans are buried, said Izabela Noveská, spokeswoman for the Office for Government Representation in Property Affairs (ÚZSVM). The office won't tend to abandoned gravesites, only those where there are no descendants to shoulder the responsibility.

Because Sudeten Germans were expelled from the Czech lands after World War II, no relatives remain and the ÚZSVM had to step in. In cases like these, Noveská said, the government takes over ownership of the land while the ÚZSVM maintains upkeep of the graves. Currently, the office maintains the two Moravian cemeteries and a few dozen other sites, she said.

But graves have to withstand more than the ravages of time. In some cases, tombs and mausoleums are hit by vandals or thieves, who pilfer the valuable stone, marble and metal used in the graves and sell them for cash.

"Since 1989, there's been a dramatic increase in the number of victimized churches and burial grounds," said Jemnice historian Vladimír Nováček. "The Pallavicini tomb has been hit twice. In the second case, vandals destroyed the coffins inside the vault and the bones had to be cremated, so there are now urns in the tomb."

Selling the building would be a boon for the town, Mayor Havlíček said. Its potential buyer is expected to sink some 4 million Kč into fixing it up. "The structure is safe, but it needs reconstruction and serious funding," he said.

The town of Klatovy in west Bohemia is in a similar situation.

A monumental 19th-century mausoleum in the town's cemetery has sat abandoned since World War II, said Jaroslav Vizinger, head of the region's Cemetery and Cremation Administration. Unable to get any funding for the tomb's upkeep, the town has been trying to sell the 72-square-meter building since 2003.

"I personally would sell it for a symbolic 1 Kč to anyone interested in investing some money in the tomb's reconstruction," said Vizinger. "It's a real pity the tomb was left like this."

A second tomb in the Klatovy cemetery is also abandoned, but it is in such poor condition that selling is not an option and it will likely collapse soon, he said.

A powerful family

If the sale is approved, the Tábor businessman lined up to buy the Pallavicini vault will be acquiring a piece of Czech history.

A branch of the powerful noble family moved to the Jemnice area in 1841, said Nováček. They were wealthy, owning a lumber mill, a brick works and two distilleries in the area, as well as some 3,500 hectares (8,649 acres) of land. The family vault used to be near the Danube in what is now Hungary, but was often flooded, so the Jemnice mausoleum was built in 1902 and the remains of seven family members were interred there.

Parts of the Pallavicini lands were nationalized in 1924 under Czechoslovak land reforms and then the rest after World War II, and the vault was abandoned.

Its present condition offers just a hint of its past glory, Nováček said.

"There were catafalques on either side, along the ceiling were sculptures of the four Apostles, and the altar was designed by an Italian master," he said. "There's very little left today. The once-glorious stained-glass windows are broken. But it must have been splendid in the old days."