There are 1,970 pipes, 50 “speaking” stops, 34 pipe “ranks” and even 12 tiny bells, but the 3D musical jigsaw puzzle being pieced together by a team of Italian craftsmen inside Notre Dame Seminary Chapel will coalesce in a pipe organ that both honors the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ French heritage and produces a resonant sound matched to the chapel’s size and acoustics.

The new Fratelli Ruffatti pipe organ – designed and built from scratch in Padua, Italy, and then disassembled and shipped, slowly, by boat to New Orleans – will replace a century-old organ that dates to the seminary’s establishment in 1923.