Generations of students at one of America’s premier
seats of learning have listened to their haunting music. But after almost 80
years, the Russian bells at Harvard have stopped chiming. A lengthy campaign to
bring them home is nearly over. Soon they’ll be ringing again at their home in a
Moscow monastery.
Ringing the changes… bells
come home
The seventeenth-century bells were taken from the Danilov Monastery and sold
to American businessman Charles Crane during the religious purges of the
1930s. He gave them to Harvard University in Massachusetts.
Attempts to recover the bells were first made almost 30 years
ago.
They are being replaced by Russian-made replicas.
