Xavier Pallàs plants his feet on the belfry floor, grips the rope, and with one tug fills the lush Spanish valley below with the reverberating peal of a church bell. Clang-clong! Clang-clong!
As church bells chime and peal the New Year, historians say the looting of more than 150,000 bells during World War II left “a sonic gap” in the landscape. A bell inside the Dom Tower in Utrecht, the ...