Salzburg's 'Glockenspiel' chimes again
Salzburg's famed 300-year-old chime, the "Glockenspiel," rang out again on Friday after two years of silence during which it underwent a thorough restoration. "It was necessary: the bells were dirty, grimy, they didn't ring clearly anymore," Erich Marx, director of the Salzburg Museum which organised the restoration, told AFP Friday. "Everything's now back in order and preserved for the next generations. The 35 bells of the Neue Residenz palace, a favourite tourist attraction, were manufactured in the late 17th century by a bellmaker from Antwerp in Belgium, Melchior de Haze, and have a repertoire of over 40 melodies from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach, to Sicilian and German folk tunes. In total, the chime mechanism comprises some 3,500 pieces spread out over five floors, and weighs several tons, all of which had to be taken apart and scrubbed of three centuries of grime, which explains the two-year restoration period, Marx noted. The entire process took some 7,500 man hours and cost 400,000 euros (544,000 dollars), according to the Salzburg Museum. Silent since December 2008, the newly shiny bells will now chime out over Salzburg again three times a day.
