Prague's St Vitus Cathedral installing new, long-overdue pipe organ

PRAGUE (Reuters) -Workers are installing more than 6,000 organ pipes to resonate through St Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle, seen as the symbolic completion of one of Europe's greatest Gothic architectural monuments after more than 700 years.

Installation of the new organ began in April and is set to conclude in August, before the painstaking work of tuning the pipes begins. The new organ will be inaugurated on June 15 next year, the feast day of St Vitus.

The cathedral, where construction began in 1344, kings were crowned throughout the centuries and former president Vaclav Havel's funeral mass took place, now has an organ installed from 1932, but its sound does not carry through the entire basilica.

"The significance of this organ is not only liturgical and cultural, but I think it is also fundamentally social," said Vojtech Matl, a supervisory board member of the foundation established by the Catholic Church for the project.

The foundation, started in 2017 to raise money for the organ, has collected more than 109 million crowns ($5.2 million) from thousands of donors, including 20,000 small donors who adopted parts of the new instrument.

Spanish organ workshop Gerhard Grenzing has built the new organ, which has been delivered in smaller pieces to speed up installation.

After installation, each of the pipes will need to be tuned by hand, checking its sound and strength, which according to organologist Stepan Svoboda will take until the end of the year.

($1 = 20.9420 Czech crowns)

(Reporting by Eva KorinkovaWriting by Jason HovetEditing by Peter Graff)

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