GEDA lift helps in restoring 200-year-old church organ in Italy

Workers use a GEDA Lift 250 Perfect to disassemble a 202-year-old organ with 2,013 pipes at the Cathedral of Cologna Veneta in Verona, Italy. (Photo: GEDA GmbH)

During the restoration of a 200-year-old church organ in the Cathedral of Cologna Veneta in Verona, Italy, workers utilized a GEDA GmbH lift to dismantle 2,013 organ pipes and the delicate components of the historical instrument.

Italian equipment rental company CI.ERRE SRL provided a GEDA Lift 250 Perfect for the task because the 8-meter-high organ pipes in the church’s gallery were well within the lift’s maximum reach of 18.3 meters.

The lift, which can transport up to 250 kg at 30 meters per minute, is made of aluminum and designed to be disassembled quickly, transported in any van or truck and reassembled without tools.

That versatility was key, as workers could only access the organ  – “one of the largest and most complex musical instruments of the 19th century” and a “work of art,” according to the GEDA – through a narrow stairway just outside the cathedral’s high gallery.

The German construction equipment manufacturer said organ builder Pietro Corna, from Bergamo, Italy, was commissioned for the project.

The cathedral is dedicated to the Nativity of St. Mary and was built in the neoclassical style in 1821.