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Prague's St Vitus Cathedral installing new, long-overdue pipe organ
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on July 22, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 22, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
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Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on July 22, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 22, 2026
Prague's St Vitus Cathedral is installing a new pipe organ with over 6,000 pipes, marking a cultural milestone. The organ will be inaugurated on June 15 next year.
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)
A pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by forcing air through pipes. Each pipe corresponds to a musical note, and they can vary in size and sound.
St Vitus Cathedral is a prominent Gothic cathedral in Prague, known for its architectural beauty and historical importance, including royal coronations and significant events.
Community funding refers to financial support raised from local individuals or organizations to finance projects that benefit the community, often involving donations or crowdfunding.
The tuning process for an organ involves adjusting each pipe to ensure it produces the correct pitch and sound quality, which can be a meticulous and time-consuming task.
A foundation is an organization established to provide funding for specific causes or projects, often through donations and grants, supporting community or charitable initiatives.
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