The famed Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, has resumed its prime position in the Dresden city skyline in Germany, 60 years after it was bombed by Allied Forces, with a special reconsecration service on Sunday.

|TOP|Painstaking restoration has seen the Church of Our Lady almost precisely to its original 18th century specifications using advanced computer technology and traditional materials.

On the night of 13 February 2005 by three waves of British Lancasters and American b-17 the city of Dresden, known as the “Florence of the Elbe”, was near flattened in one of the most prolific and controversial bombing campaigns of the entire Second World War. Nearly 35,000 people died in the 75 per cent of the city devastated by the firestorm that resulted from the bombing.

The Church of Our Lady actually survived the initial bombing campaign, only to implode afterward because of the structural damage caused by the horrific temperatures.

The reconstruction of Frauenkirche is the conclusion of years of dedication and sheer will power. “The will to reconstruct the church burned even more fiercely than the firestorm that destroyed it,” said Gerhard Glaser in the Boston Globe.

The recently retired head of the Office for Preservation of Historical Monuments in the German state of Saxony added: “It has been the work of a lifetime for many people. First there was overcoming opposition from those who fought the idea of reconstruction as utterly futile. Then there was the incredible labour of actually rebuilding.”

The cost of the project has been considerable, $160 million, including millions raised by the Friends of Dresden organisation, whose members are Americans with ties to the city.

One member of the organisation, Guenther Blobel, native of Dresden and professor of cell biology at Rockefeller University who received the 1999 Nobel Prize for medicine, donated his entire $960,000 award to the project.

He said: “It seemed the proper thing to do.”

The project to rebuild the church officially began in 1993 with the painful sifting of the ruins, with every stone catalogued, before the actual building work started with the laying of an original stone block in May 1994.

|QUOTE|Ulrich R. Schoenfeld, lead architect for the firm IPRO-Dresden, said: “It was like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle with many pieces missing. At times the work was joyous; other times it was agony. Every day we laughed with one eye, cried with the other.”

Originally built between 1726 and 1743 by architect George Baehr, the crowning glory, and most difficult feature of the church to restore, was the ornate 14,326-ton sandstone dome without internal supports.

With its dome and Baroque curlicues restored to a near perfect replica, the church will once again hold its place as one of the most architecturally significant Protestant buildings in Europe.

“We started with rubble, with broken fragments of building, with scraps of stone,” said Karl-Heinz Schuetzhold, leader of the engineering team. “We had to study every piece and fragment to ensure we understood not only where it fit but what function it served, whether for bearing weight or for enhancing sound or for ornamentation.”

Exactly 9,286 carved stones were recovered from the ruins of the church, lying dormant throughout the Communist reign over the former East German city.

“But every stone was catalogued, measured, precisely described, and numbered,” said Schoenfeld. “We had to understand where the unusable ones belonged in order to cut new sandstone to fit exactly with the old.”

The church was officially consecrated in a special service on Sunday, with a crowd of 60,000 gathered in front on the Neumarkt. The ceremony was also attended by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, designated Chancellor Angela Merkel and German Federal President, Horst Koehler, who said that the newly rebuilt church “unites us”.

Bishop of the evangelical-Lutheran Church of Saxony, Jochen Bohl, said the reconstruction was a “great work in the spirit of reconciliation”.

He added: “Where we do good and meet our fellow human beings with love, and where we are ready to forgive and reconcile, is where God’s Kingdom grows.”