If you plan a trip to Rome, chances are your must-see list will include well-known attractions like the Coliseum, the Trevi Fountain or the Vatican Museum.

There is, however, a more ubiquitous staple of the eternal city that does not feature in any city guide but will certainly catch your attention while you’re there: nuns. There are hundreds of them, maybe thousands of them, walking around Rome’s cobblestone streets, their kind eyes wandering around in marvel like a soccer fan visiting Wembley stadium in England or Camp Nou in Spain.

They come from all over the world and all over Italy; though the “locals” live in centuries-old convents and monasteries surrounded by blooming gardens. It doesn’t matter, though: when in Rome they all feel at home.

Emmanuel (first row, right) attends Italian class at Ponte Sant'Angelo Methodist church, watched by school secretary Annapaola Comba in the back. | Photo by Andrea Palatnik.

ROME – Tapping his fingers with impatience, Yeboah Emmanuel watches the Roman traffic jam through the bus’ dirty window. Emmanuel, a 31-year-old refugee from Ghana, is late for Italian class. Although weary from the two-hour commute, he’s the first to jump on the sidewalk as the bus stops, moving quickly across the cobblestone streets amid cars and honking motorcycles. Two minutes later, he’s sitting inside a tiny stuffy room on the first floor of the Ponte Sant’Angelo Methodist Church, shuffling the pages of his book to find the day’s lesson as he catches his breath. Emmanuel is surrounded by some 20 other students — who, like him, are immigrants or asylum petitioners, mostly from Sub-Saharan Africa, who despite being illegal have no other place to call home but Italy.

“I’m eager for a job here,” said Emmanuel.

The class, designed to give immigrants basic Italian skills, is taught by volunteers and organized by the Federation of Protestant Churches of Italy. The class is Emmanuel’s only connection with the world outside a Red Cross refugee camp in Castelnuovo di Porti, on the outskirts of Rome. Emmanuel reached Italy exactly one year ago after a nerve-racking journey that started six years earlier in his hometown of Tamale, Ghana, and ended in the Italian port of Lampedusa. Among the most harrowing parts of the journey were three days inside a Libyan prison during last year’s uprising.

Annapaola Comba, who coordinates the language program for refugees at the Methodist church, said that all three classes are full, and that she gets heartbroken every time she needs to turn someone away. A retired teacher and volunteer secretary of the church school, Comba has serene light-brown eyes and tiny hands. Stroking the silver cross that hangs from her neck, she climbs the church’s staircase to supervise the classes on the second floor with great agility, despite being well into her 70s. Comba confirmed a surge in the number of newcomers from Sub-Saharan Africa entering the country after the Libyan struggle started.

“I’d say 80 percent of them came to Italy last year in the boats from Libya,” explained Comba. “They are not Libyans, [they’re] mostly from Central and West Africa, but because of the revolution the [Libyan] authorities shipped them here.”

Comba is referring to what many saw as the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s revenge against former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. In 2008, Berlusconi agreed to invest $5 billion in Libya to have Gaddafi hold back the flow of African citizens who were reaching Italy through Libyan ports. However, after Italy declared support for the NATO strikes against Libya, the deal was off and Gaddafi decided to open his gates. By some accounts (the United Nations included), at least 10,000 African migrants living in Libya were sent en masse by both Gaddafi’s soldiers and rebels as a means of retaliation against Rome.

International human rights organizations like the Red Cross and Amnesty International reckon that thousands of refugees from Libya have perished in 2011 attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea on frail improvised boats, usually overcrowded, headed for Lampedusa and Sicily. Now, local organizations like the Federation of Protestant Churches of Italy are trying to help those who survived the journey find a new beginning in Europe – with no help from the government whatsoever.

“That was Libya’s retaliation against Italy, for Libya’s hold on the immigrants used to be its prisons,” said Comba. “Now, the Mediterranean became a cemetery.”

Vicenzo Barca (right) talks to African refugees during a "sportello" counseling session along two other volunteers from the Federation of Protestant Churches of Italy. | Photo by Andrea Palatnik.

According to Franca Di Lecce, director of the federation’s Refugee and Migrant Services, even though the number of migrants in Italy went through the roof as a result of the Arab Spring (around 50,000 since January ’11; one fifth of them just passing on their way to France), immigration is not a priority for the Italian government. “It’s almost like they wanted it to become a huge problem so that all public attention was deflected from economic to social issues like immigration,” said Di Lecce, who belongs to the Lutheran church. She speaks fast, smoking nervously behind her desk.

“The Libyan crisis is one of the most critical situations we’ve faced lately from the human rights point of view. The people who were sent back to Libya were tortured and imprisoned, many were murdered. The churches here decided to act in order to stop these violations,” added Di Lecce.

Besides Italian classes, the federation offers one-on-one legal and social counseling four times a week for refugees and immigrants — what’s called the “sportello” (“counter” in English) sessions. After receiving basic orientation at the “sportello,” the refugees are then forwarded to one of the federation’s skilled social workers, who keep track of their judicial processes until the final verdict from the Italian migration committee. The “sportello” volunteers, who are mostly Lutheran and Waldensian members of the federation, talk to an average of a thousand refugees each year — an impressive figure, considering both the small size of the Protestant congregation in Italy (1.3 percent of the population) and the estimated number of migrants living in the country (around 55,000).

“As Protestants, we are part of society and we do our part to have a more just world,” said Di Lecce.

*   *   *

Yeboah Emmanuel: trying to find a path in Italy, after six years on the run. | Photo by Andrea Palatnik.

For good and evil, Yeboah Emmanuel’s life has always revolved around religion. He was born to a Muslim father and a Baptist mother in the outskirts of Tamale, an muslim-majority city in northern Ghana, and raised in a conservative Muslim household. At age 26, married and with a small daughter, he finally gathered enough courage to reveal his great secret: he was, in his heart, a Christian.

“I believe in Jesus and only in Jesus,” said Emmanuel. “I went to the mosque when I was young, and when I was old enough I stopped.”

His conversion marked the beginning of a life on the run for Emmanuel. His father expelled and disinherited him, and his Muslim relatives flogged him repeatedly. He managed to escape to the house of one of his mother’s sisters, in a nearby town. Three days later, he and his aunt were attending mass when the house was set on fire by a couple of his Muslim cousins, who had followed him there. He left his wife and daughter with the local pastor and fled to another town, and another town, until he crossed the border to Burkina Faso.

“I had 20 cedis ($11) in my pocket and nothing more. I just prayed,” said Emmanuel.

From Burkina he went further north to Niger, and after almost two years living off small construction jobs there he quietly moved back to Ghana — he and his wife decided to settle in Accra, in the Christian dominated south. Life was starting to calm down when his mother died, back in Tamale. Despite the danger of running into his Muslim family, he saw no choice but to go back to his hometown to bury her.

Sure enough, his father was waiting for him, and hours after his mother’s funeral Emmanuel was threatened again by the Muslim clan. He left the country on that same night — this time, for Libya, where a pastor had given him the address of a Baptist church in the city of Gharyan. He stayed there little more than a year, saving money to return to Accra, when the Libyan revolution broke.

“I decided to go away because everybody was running for their lives,” said Emmanuel.

Hoping to reach the airport, he took a bus to Tripoli and was arrested upon arrival. After three days, loyalist soldiers removed Emmanuel and hundreds of other prisoners to a boat. Unaware of where he was heading, Emmanuel endured 48 hours at sea until disembarking in Lampedusa, a small Italian island in the Mediterranean located between the coasts of Tunisia and Sicily. After three weeks of nightmare in an improvised refugee site, Emmanuel managed to get to Rome, where he was placed in a Red Cross camp on April 29, 2011. He talks to his wife once or twice a month, using phone cards provided by the camp. The calls enable him to hear news of his children, including a baby daughter born while he was in Libya.

“I keep telling her that once I have my documents I will bring her, too,” said Emmanuel. “You know, I never met my second daughter.”

*   *   *

Emmanuel is one of the 60 refugees, most of them men, who come to the Methodist church for the Italian classes every week. Like Emmanuel, many come from Red Cross refugee camps and other shelters in the borders of Rome. Only a small number keeps coming after the second week of class – some end up being relocated or manage to land a full time job; most lack the resources to come to the city regularly. But there’s always a waiting list to begin the course.

The classes are held in the rooms used by the Methodist church for Sunday school. The books are donated by the church, which collects contributions among its members to help the refugees. A big problem for the program now is transportation for the students, who need to take trains and buses to get to class. A European Union project aimed at helping refugees used to finance transportation costs and other basic needs for migrants being assisted by social institutions, but the budget crisis in the continent forced the end of that initiative.

“Sometimes they come to us with tickets after being fined for riding the bus without paying, but we can’t afford to pay for them every time. We’re trying to get some financing for their transportation again,” said Comba.

Benjamin Tannur, a 25-year-old from Ghana, came to class that Monday with a bus fine after being caught without a valid ticket. He said it was the third since he started attending class at Ponte Sant’Angelo. But because he was fired from his last job — as a bus boy at restaurant near Termini Station — Tannur had no money to pay for the bus.

“The school in the camp was full, so a friend of mine there said I should come here. I like it, I feel very accepted,” said Tannur.

Tannur is living in a camp set up by the Red Cross and administered by an Italian NGO whose name he said he can’t remember for being unable to pronounce it. He has no documents and shares a room with seven other refugees, all in the same situation. He is now waiting for the migration committee to decide about his asylum petition, filed eight months ago.

“A lot of people are being rejected, but the lawyer said he will fight for me. The UN is paying him, and they say he will do anything I ask him to. I told him I want to stay,” said Tannur, whose expression suggests a mixture of permanent apprehension and chronic lack of sleep.

The young Ghanaian is still trying to digest the events in his life that forced him to flee the small tribe where he was born and raised, near the eastern border with Togo. When he was 20, he said, the elders of the tribe wanted to use him as a human sacrifice in a ritual to mourn the death of the chief priest. He was kept naked in a locked chamber with hens and other animals, being fed once a day.

“I didn’t believe I could leave that room. But I dug a hole in the wall and escaped,” recalled Tannur. “They chose me [for the sacrifice] because my mother and father are dead, so nobody would fight for me.”

Benjamin Tannur holds the book used in class: high hopes to stay in Italy. | Photo by Andrea Palatnik.

After wandering in the bush for days, he found a cocoa farmer who offered him a job. Later on, the farmer — who was also an arms dealer — forced him to bring ammunition to local drug lords. He ended up being arrested along with the farmer, but managed to escape, once again, from the police station. Tannur crossed three borders until reaching Libya, and lived there off construction jobs for two years until the war broke. He was settled in Homs, one of the most violent fronts of the revolution. He was arrested by the police in late March and kept in a jail where he received regular beatings — he made a point of showing me his left shoulder, with a deep scar marking the place where a metal pin had to be inserted to replace a shattered bone.

One day the prison guards gathered around a hundred inmates and took them to the port, where they embarked a small ship to Lampedusa. He spent five days in the sea.

“The problem is that they don’t give you any documents when you arrive in Italy. They say there’s no war or crisis in my country [Ghana], so they can’t treat me as a refugee,” explained Tannur.

Of the 27 Ghanaians who arrived with him on the Italian island, none got documents. “The Italian [authorities] say: ‘if you’re not Libyan you have no reason to be here.”

*   *   *

Besides the Italian classes, Tannur and Emmanuel are helped by another cadre of volunteers during the “sportello” sessions, among them Vicenzo Barca. Once a week, Barca talks to illegal immigrants and refugees about ways to survive in Italy and escape deportation. A retired psychiatrist and college teacher, he still works as a literary translator once in a while — Barca, 67, speaks fluent Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and French. He decided to volunteer for the Federation of Protestant Churches of Italy five years ago, after a friend told him about their outreach programs to assist undocumented immigrants. At first, Barca worked at Ponte Sant’Angelo Methodist church as an Italian teacher, but he’s now a member of the “sportello” counseling group.

“Teaching is too frustrating, because you see these refugees and their situation, which is really awful, and you have to deal with the limited resources at hand to help them,” said Barca. “You feel weak.”

“Here [as a counselor] I have the feeling that I can do an extra something for them. Especially since a couple of years from now, when they made immigration laws even tougher [in Italy], these people really need all the help they can get,” added Barca.

The first thing the volunteers do is find a place for the newcomers to stay, if they haven’t been placed in a shelter or camp. On the desk he sets to receive the Wednesday appointments, Barca keeps a copy of “Roma: Dove mangiare, dormire, lavarsi” (“Rome: Where to eat, sleep, shower”), a useful guide published and updated annually by the Comunita di Sant’Egidio, a lay movement of Catholic inspiration with a broad outreach agenda in Italy. The second step is to direct families with children to the localities where they have been registered (when they have) to require inclusion in the municipal welfare system and a spot for the kids in a public school.

Refugees like Emmanuel and Tannur started pouring into Italy almost a year ago, according to Barca, and because they are in a sort of legal limbo until their asylum petition is accepted or denied, it’s even harder to help them. The process can take several months between all judicial levels – and despite the fact that in theory they can work, finding a job without any documents is almost impossible. The Italian economy being in shambles doesn’t help, either.

If the petition is denied, the immigrant has 15 days to leave the country, but few actually do. And then starts a new battle, either for citizenship or to leave Italy for some other more welcoming European country.

“Italy is an old country; we should use these young people as a motion force,” said Barca. “Instead they are kept like prisoners in those camps, doing nothing all day and getting depressed.”

Vespas parked in front of a mural on the wall of a shuttered shop. | Photo by Trinna Leong.

A stark contrast to Rome, Napoli — as the Italians call it — is littered with garbage and graffiti. Though trash and pickpockets are everywhere, the city’s complicated history has created a unique façade for travelers to visit. Once a Greek colony, Naples later became a part of the Roman Republic and has over the years became a melting pot of different cultures and people. In modern times, however, local gangs control the city and this background gives the city a rough polish that one does not find in Rome. Graffiti on new and ancient walls, on monuments and on streets are not uncommon and have left an indelible mark on the city’s identity.

Websites like www.fatcap.com even has a page dedicated to all the graffiti found in Naples. One cannot miss the graffiti on the walls along streets and alleyways. Whether one chooses to view these as vandalism or art, is another question entirely…  Most of us had never been to Naples and did not know what to expect of the city. Having been to Rome earlier in the week, the sight of words and pictures sprayed coherently or incoherently everywhere in public spaces looks oddly jarring when placed against Baroque and Medieval buildings. Churches tucked in tight narrow streets have piles of garbage in one corner and slogans like “Mastiffs” or “Papa Vero” scribbled in ink on adjacent walls. In some cultures, this could be seen as offensive and disrespectful to a place of worship. But in Naples, no one seems to be bothered at all. “Mastiffs” is a local soccer team in Naples, and in Italy, soccer is king.

My initial reaction to the preposterous amount of graffiti everywhere was one of shock and bewilderment at the lack of appreciation Neapolitans show toward historic monuments. Buildings and statues that should have been treasured and taken care of have less than pretty words sprayed across them. It took a few hours before I calmed down and noticed that the words add a touch of character to the city and complement its tough image. I had to remind myself that this is not Rome. Naples is all about street cred and tourists who come to Naples should not expect to be greeted by a quaint city.

It soon became a game of “spot cool graffiti” as we tried to capture works of art with our cameras. From sentences that vented out people’s frustrations with the mafia (particularly the Camorra), religious devotion to saints and political activism, Naples’ spray-painted streets are unconventionally iconic. Eating the city’s famed pizza by a pile of trash next to a wall of graffiti even gave us a sense that we are already Neapolitan. Graffiti art in Europe is different from New York. It’s not just words on the walls of an urban city, it’s about the blend of both old and new cultures, and that’s what makes Naples what it is today.

See a collection of various photographs of Neapolitan graffiti, culled from the Religio staff.

Some of the pilgrims who travel to San Giovanni Rotondo every year come to ask Padre Pio for a cure or to thank him for being healed. Many of the miracles attributed to San Pio da Pietrelcina are related to impossible healings and mysterious cures, and the hospital built by the Capuchin friar in San Giovanni Rotondo, the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, is filled with believers who trust Padre Pio’s health-giving powers.

Agnes Reyes, 54, immigrated six years ago to Italy from the Philippines. Brought up in a very religious family, Reyes survived cancer and came to San Giovanni Rotondo for the first time this spring. She decided to embark on the pilgrimage as a means to thank the saint for her recovery and to pray for ill members of her family.

Maria Persichetti, on the other hand, is a 75-year-old from Veroli, four hours away from San Giovanni Rotondo. She comes every year with her family to Saint Pio’s shrine. She says her son-in-law was saved from a coma by Padre Pio, who appeared to him in dreams while he was in the hospital. “A miracle has happened,” she insists with a smile. “We have a lot of faith in Padre Pio.”

Image of St Michael inside the shrine built to remember his apparition at San Michelle. | Photo by Andrea Palatnik.

FOGGIA — On yet another astonishingly beautiful day in Italy (the weather gods must really love us), the Religio team was taken on a tour of the Padre Pio pilgrimage complex, starting at the two main churches of the shrine. Next, we paced through the Padre Pio museum, filled with relics protected by thick Plexiglas and surrounded by a rather impressive number of donation boxes.

Padre Pio sandal keychains for sale at the Padre Pio shrine's gift shop. | Photo by Andrea Palatnik.

After the excursion — which ended inside a gift shop where visitors can buy Padre Pio-shaped bottles and John Paul II-decorated pencils among other inspiring items — the group scattered around town to find pilgrims and business-owners that live off the crowd attracted by the Padre Pio “cult.”

While Nathan Vickers and Brandon Gates talked to a smiling nun who decided to relocate to San Giovanni Rotondo after her first pilgrimage there, Aby Thomas interviewed a 20-year-old Italian ragazza who decided to use her spare time to go on a spiritual journey. Michael, Teresa Mahoney, Ines Novacic and Anam Siddiq reported on local shops and hotels built around the faith in Padre Pio, and Sarah Laing and Anne Cohen visited the Padre Pio broadcast station to witness the production of a 24-hour schedule entirely dedicated to the Capuchin friar with a questionable set of stigmatae.

It was more reporters than San Giovanni had seen in a long time. After the reporting blitz, our crew left San Giovanni Rotondo for the medieval streets of San Michele, a charming little town perched 600 feet above sea level on the mountains overlooking the Adriatic Sea. It is a town with astounding views of the sea to the east and idyllic fields of grass peppered by flocks of sheep and blooming cherry trees to the west.

Our first stop was the Sanctuary of Saint Michael Archangel, a stunning church from the Byzantine era erected to celebrate the triple apparition of Saint Michael in the region. Our guide, one of the sanctuary’s monks, explained to us that the shrine is the only Catholic temple in the world that didn’t have its soil consecrated by a bishop before construction: that’s because, according to legend, the Archangel Michael told the bishop that he had consecrated the spot himself. The church was built atop a natural cave where the original shrine was placed after the visions. Its wide entrance merges into the building’s white bricks in an amazing and yet natural-looking way. The famous image of Saint Michael that sits in the main altar, made of Carrara marble and gold, was brought to the cave in 1507, two centuries after the first vision of the archangel by a local shepherd. Professor Stille was told by one of the priests that many exorcisms have been practiced in the cave lately – the demon is apparently trying to reestablish a presence in peaceful San Michele.

Sunset on Monte Sant'Angelo | Photo by Andrea Palatnik.

After the tour, part of the group headed to the castle on top of Monte Sant’Angelo, a ninth century fortress overlooking a valley with a privileged view of the Italian sunset. After delving into the guilty pleasures of purchasing local goods we went back to the hotel, where a special feast would soon take place. This was Professor Stille’s last night in Italy, and he deserved an appropriate farewell party. We occupied the dining room of the hotel in our finest attire to celebrate the success of the trip and roast professors, collaborators and students alike.

After being informed that Adam Goldman (Professor Goldman’s son!), makes a living in Germany as a stand-up comedian, the group asked him for a private pocket show in the hotel lobby, which involved a couple of jokes about Yiddish mamas and a slightly embarrassed girlfriend. The performance was followed by an impromptu talent show with Missouri-related jokes by Nathan and a Religio version of white gangsta rap by “Mother” Teresa rhyming “Stille” and “Otto per Mille.” We also played a round of charades, having Professor Stille show off his rather surprising dancing skills to convey Dances with Wolves.

The night isn’t over yet, and as I write these words the rest of our gang is learning a couple of fetching dance moves (“Teach Me How To Dougie” anyone?) from Ines while drinking some fine Italian prosecco in plastic cups. Our journey is almost over.

Leaking from the roof caused water damage in the south wall. | Photo by Andrea Palatnick.

The 100-year-old Russian Orthodox Church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, located in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, has its environmental challenges, both from within and from without. Inside, the soot from thousands of candles has accumulated on everything: the walls, the domed ceiling, the icons and the chandeliers. From the outside, the church is buffeted by pollution and dust from industrial Brooklyn and nearby Manhattan.

For the pastor, the Very Reverend Wiaczeslaw Krawczuk, maintaining the church is a huge headache. “I’ve been to a monastery in Poland that hadn’t been cleaned in more than a hundred years, but because it was in the middle of the woods it looks better than our church. There’s too much dust here,” said Krawczuk.

The church, built between 1916 and 1921 (even though the parish started in a different building in 1908) with a project inspired by the Cathedral of the Assumption, in Moscow, hasn’t had a major renovation since 1978.

Transfiguration, a historic landmark, is showing its age. The beautiful frescos that cover almost every inch of the cathedral’s walls and ceiling are covered with a sticky layer of solidified fumes, which adhered to the paint throughout the years. Some of them, like the solemn depiction of the Virgin Mary holding her protecting veil from heaven, on the north wall, also show spots of peeling paint.

Krawczuk recalled the day in 1992 when he celebrated mass in the church for the first time. Standing alone in the aisle, he looked up to the central chandelier, hanging majestically from the big cupola above the main altar. Its crystal pendants were remarkably dirty and opaque. He summoned the altar boys and discretely asked them to think of another place for the four large candle stands located right beneath the chandelier, surrounding an icon of Jesus Christ.

“The crystals were very dark because of the candles, so I told them to take the candles away,” said Krawczuc. That was two decades ago and the chandeliers still haven’t been cleaned.

Cathedral of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, on Driggs Avenue | Photo by Andrea Palatnick.

In 1996, Krawczuc started a broad fundraising campaign among the Russian Orthodox community in Williamsburg and Greenpoint to restore the centenary temple to its original splendor. The five byzantine cupolas and the windows were the first to be repaired. The cost of the project, estimated in $1.4 million in 1999, came to a total of $2.1 million in 2004, when the contract was finally signed. The church struggled for government grants, but all it managed to receive were $350,000 from the New York Parks Department.

“You know, in Poland the government takes care of the historic sites of the country, it pays for half of the restorations. But here even the parks get more money than we do,” said Krawczuc.

The church council is about to sign a contract for the second phase of the restoration project, which will clean and repair the interior of the building. The planning has been going on for four years, and the estimated costs now surpass the $2 million bar.

The cathedral was listed in 1969 as a New York City Landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and as a historical and architectural milestone in the National Registry of Historic Places compiled by the Department of Interior.

According to Krawczuc, the church council wants to hire an artist from Connecticut who uses natural glue made from honey wax to fix the peeling.

“Because the frescos were painted over a canvas and glued to the walls it makes it more difficult to clean. But he says this glue is more durable and won’t dry after 10 of 15 years like regular glue,” explained the priest.

On the south wall, the upper part of the frescos of Archangels Michael and Gabriel has been ruined by the water that leaked from the roof before the 2004 restoration. To stop the leak, even the copper shell of the five onion domes had to be replaced.

The western wall, where the main entrance and the choir balcony are located, is awfully stained with dozens of white hands over the dark brown paint – a result from the regular maintenance of the four air-conditioners installed there.

The iconostas that hides the main altar of the Transfiguration and the two smaller sanctuaries – one dedicated to Saint Vladimir, one to the Virgin Mary – will also be cleaned and repaired.

Krawczuc said that three companies will be hired by the church to perform the repairs, but he chose not to reveal their names because the contracts are yet to be signed. But, he assured, all the decisions were made and they are ready to begin.

“We should have started this cleaning two years ago, but we got stuck because we focused on the elevator [that would be used in the reform]. The company made some wrong calculations, and in the end it said that the church floor wasn’t strong enough to support the structure of the elevator, and that because our doors are too small they would have to assemble everything inside and that alone would take months,” said the reverend.

Now, he added, they decided to do everything with scaffolds. The trickiest part will be the cleaning and repainting of the blue sky with golden stars that decorates the ceiling of the main cupola, which stands 90 feet above the floor. The chandelier will finally be cleaned and rewired, and the missing pendants will be replaced.

“I think that someone used the wrong chemicals to clean these chandeliers the last time, because the metal links are oxidized and many parts fell down over the years. But now we’ll do it the right way,” said Krawczuk.