[serious classical music]
[sound of bricks falling]
Female Narrator: Dresden’s grand Kreuzkirche, or Church of the Holy Cross, was bombarded in 1760 during the Seven Year’s War, and two years after the war had ended, the tower’s east wall collapsed. Rather than rebuilding, the city decided to demolish what was left of the church, brick by brick. Bellotto’s painting documents that painstaking process. One of the only people brave enough to scale the dizzying height of the tower was a stonemason. He also devised the special ladder you can see going up the building’s right side, as this account in a 1765 journal describes.
[music ends]
Male Actor with German Accent: “The mason Künzelmann constructed a curious ladder of various rods that were attached to each other, with sturdy rungs inserted horizontally, and with several assistants [he] climbed the church tower on [the first of July and began dismantling what was still standing, piece by piece.”
[dramatic classical music]
Female Narrator: The stonemason and his helpers tossing bricks down must have been quite a spectacle; you can see the townspeople crowding around to watch them in this perilous work.
[music ends]
