Silent for 800 years, medieval organ sings again in Jerusalem

The pipes of a medieval organ, buried for centuries and discovered near the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, are once more filling a Jerusalem monastery with ancient melodies.

- STORY: CHLOE ROUVEYROLLES-BAZIRE / AFP

"This is a window into the past... we have the opportunity for the first time in modern history of listening to a medieval sound which is a thousand years old," said David Catalunya, a Spanish researcher who has worked for more than five years to bring the 11th-century instrument back to life.

"And it's not through a recreation or a hypothetical reconstruction, but it’s really the original sound: the same vibration that the Crusaders heard at the Nativity Church," he said.

Dating nearly as far back as the invention of the instrument itself, it was discovered in 1906 at the Biblical birthplace of Jesus Christ.

Catalunya pulls on small tabs to play the organ — which he fondly refers to as a “miracle” — expelling a formidable ringing from the otherwise modest wooden instrument.