Floor to ceiling. St. Vitus Cathedral is being completely cleaned for the first time in forty years

Climbers on ropes carefully vacuuming the walls and stained glass windows, cleaning all the stone elements, walls and cornices. Using brushes made of natural materials and vacuum cleaners, they remove decades-old deposits of dirt in the highest parts of the monument. Visitors will notice the cleaning at first sight - the sandstone from which the cathedral is built is noticeably lighter after the intervention of specially trained workers. 

"This is an absolutely extraordinary event, unprecedented in its scope in the last forty years. To erect scaffolding to access all the windows would be extremely costly and the interior would have to be closed to visitors, but thanks to the climbers, a general clean-up can take place in full operation," explains a representative of the Department of Heritage Protection of the Office of the President of the Republic Petr Chotebor.

"Extremely heavy visitor traffic, together with the natural airflow, contributes to layers of dust and other debris settling inside the cathedral. Routine cleaning can remove only a small part of these deposits, The stone elements can therefore only be cleaned continuously during major repairs," describes the director of the Prague Castle Administration Pavel Vyhnánek.

But the scaffolding is now standing in the cathedral after all. Behind the main altar, experts are working on it to remove the structural defects found in the arches above the column heads of the inner triforium. In the same place, restorers are repairing the stained-glass windows designed by Max Švabinský. Due to their weight and climatic influences, the stained glass windows are deformed in several places, and their lead warps need to be replaced. Soon the scaffolding will be moved to the gargoyles on the outside of the cathedral, as work on such a large monument never ends.

Repairs are continuing in other places in the castle grounds. The Prague Castle Administration is reconstructing, for example Institute of Noblemenwhere workers are completely renovating the facades and six thousand square metres of the roof. This is the largest investment project in several decades, costing CZK 180 million.

castle.cz/ gnews.cz - RoZ

PHOTO - Zuzana Bönisch