Commemorative Bell #9801 has already arrived in Prague via the Vltava River
photo: Press release, Nikola Lörinczová/Bell #9801 heads along the Vltava River to Prague
The massive bell weighing 9,801 kilograms has already arrived on a ship to Prague. It will be formally presented to the public on Sunday, August 28 at 7 p.m. The number in its name symbolically recalls the number of bells confiscated in our territory during the protectorate during the Second World War.
A press release published for the event states that the casting of the bell is largely supported by donors involved in a public fundraiser with a title referring to the inscription on the bell’s casing, which states that it “speaks with the voice of thousands of bells silenced by war”.
Bell #9801 will be temporarily located near Čapadel on the Smetana embankment. An accompanying music program will be part of its ceremonial unveiling. Priest Tomáš Halík will bless the bell here.
The relief decoration of the bell was designed by Prague bell ringers Kryštof Čižinský and Jakub Kamínek. On one side, his cloak is made of fragments of requisitioned bells, which is meant to symbolically connect the lost and the new in one whole.
The last time a similarly large bell was in Bohemia was almost five hundred years ago. It was a Sigismund bell intended for St. Vitus Cathedral. Bell #9801 was cast in Austria’s oldest bell maker Grassmayr in Innsbruck.
The symbolism is also connected with the term and method of transport of Bell #9801. Eighty years ago, in August 1942, the last ship set sail from Prague’s Manin to the war factories in Germany, carrying requisitioned bells from the territory of the then protectorate.
Currently, the final part of the journey of the bell took place by sailing on the Vltava from Mělník, where the bell-ringing test took place.
The bell will be on display on the Smetana embankment until the end of this September. In the future, it will be donated to the capital and will find a permanent location on Rohanské Island in the bell tower, which should be part of Maniny Park, the revitalization of which is currently being prepared.
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