The 700-year-old Prague cathedral will get a new voice as an organ is nearly installed

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PRAGUE (AP) — The installation of a new organ at Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral is nearing completion, giving the 700-year-old biggest temple in the Czech Republic a proper instrument to accompany religious services and concerts.

An international team was working on a three-story scaffolding above the main entrance inside the cathedral on Tuesday to put in place some of the remaining pipes. The work is scheduled to be complete in late August, followed by the voicing and tuning of the pipes through the end of the year.

The public could hear the organ’s first sounds on June 15 next year, the feast of St. Vitus, officials said.

The organ contains some 6,000 pipes, ranging in length 7 millimeters (0.28 inches) to 7 meters (23 feet).

The four-manual instrument was build in a workshop of Gerhard Grenzing in El Papiol near Barcelona in Spain. The renowned German organ builder has constructed almost 140 organs and reconstructed more than 90 historical instruments in many countries.

Once completed in Spain, the new organ was disassembled and its parts were gradually transported to Prague on trucks.

The cathedral is linked to the Czech statehood. It’s a place where the Czech kings were coronated and buried while the Czech crown jewels are stored inside.

The funeral Mass for Vaclav Havel, the Czech Republic’s first president, was celebrated in the cathedral on Dec 23, 2011.

The previous organ was completed in the early 1930s, but turned out to be too small for its monumental space and frequently broke down. There was no interest in fixing the organ during World War II and more than 40 years of communist rule.

Effort to build a new organ started in 2017, with a crowdfunding campaign that collected more than 109 million Czech koruna, or crowns, ($5.2 million), about 98% of the sum needed.