A memorial bell # 9801 will be cast for Prague at the bell tower in Innsbruck on Friday
In the future, the bell will be located on Prague’s Rohan Island. The initiators of the project collect the money for the bell public collection.
Ten tons of molten bells exceeding 1000 degrees Celsius are poured by Austrian bell ringers into a mold stored in the ground in a so-called casting pit, so that the mold, which will be exposed to enormous pressure, does not burst. “A few minutes of casting, which requires great skill and concentration of bell-riders, is a key moment in the many-month process of the birth of a new bell,” said Ondřej Boháč, bell ringer and chairman of the Sanctus Castulus association, which organizes the project.
The production of the bell began several months ago. The bell-riders first made a wooden template that set the profile and tone of the bell. According to her, they then circled a so-called fake bell with a waxy surface, on which the artists modeled the future relief and inscriptions with red wax. This was followed by covering the false bell with fine clay and firing the mold. The false bell was destroyed, but a form with all the reliefs and inscriptions was created.
After Friday’s casting, the casting hole will be covered with charcoal and the bell will cool in the ground for several days. Only then will the bell-riders pick it up, break the form and remove the new bell. Then they will have to adjust and clean its surface.
The bell will measure 187 centimeters and weigh 9801 kilograms. The weight was determined based on the number of bells requisitioned during World War II. According to the authors of its artistic form, Kryštof Čižinský and Jakub Kamínek, the main motif for the decoration of bell # 9801 will be the rebirth of the old and destroyed into the new. The cloak is decorated with fragments of bells that were destroyed during the war.
The bell should arrive in Prague in the summer. The location on Rohan Island is tentatively planned for 2024, before which the work will be temporarily on a pontoon on the Vltava. According to an earlier statement by the Deputy Mayor of Prague Petr Hlaváček (for TOP 09), the location of the bell on Rohanský ostrov will also be planned by designers who will design the future shape of Rohanský and Libeňský ostrov.