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Dresden’s Frauenkirche closes for repairs

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Dresden’s Frauenkirche closes for repairs
Photo: DPA

Dresden’s newly rebuilt landmark the Frauenkirche will be closed for minor renovations for the first week in January, church officials said on Friday.

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Mass, concerts and sightseeing tours bringin more than seven million people into the famous church have left their mark since it reopened in October 2005. The church was totally rebuilt after suffering extensive damage at the end of World War II.

“The signs of aging on doors and seating will be repaired, worn out parts smoothed out. Especially used parts will be repainted,” said Thomas Gottschlich, head of the church's building management.

And while carpenters and painters will touch up the aged interior and correct little imperfection between January 5-10, locksmiths and electricians will get to work to give the church a fresher look.

“Plastering and sandstone profiles will get a professional dusting,” Gottschlich said. Therefore the staircase to the dome and the lantern observation platform will be closed on three consecutive days from January 5 as well.

The Frauenkirche will reopen on January 11 at 11 am.

One of the highlights of the newly done up church will be the first speech of a Nobel Peace Prize winner. “We are expecting Bishop Desmond Tutu in September,” Pastor Sebastian Freyd said in a statement.

Even though the church survived the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden during World War II, it burned out completely and collapsed the very next day. Reconstruction took 13 years - the church's exterior was finished in 2004, while the interior was completed one year later.

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