Rome – Day 6: “FALL BACK!” Edition
In Rome, where I am right now, we set our clocks back now, 25/26 October.
Therefore, I get an extra hour of sleep which I am obviously not having, because I am posting this.
This “fall back” change isn’t such a big deal for us who have Mass to attend. If we screw up we are an hour early for Mass.
In the USA, however, the time change will be Sunday Nov 2 (All Souls).
Perhaps later in the day, if I am walking around, I might find some Roman “clock” stuff. It has been a while since I have seen, for example, the sun clock in Santa Maria deli Angeli, built into the remains of the huge Baths of Diocletian.
At SM degli Angeli there is a tiny hole in the roof which, creating a pin-hole camera, allows a beam of sunlight, an image of the solar disk, to strike the floor below. Your Earth’s yellow sun’s image moves across the floor of the basilica. At solar noon it crosses the meridian point. This served as Rome’s official clock for a long time. At noon, a flag would go up from the roof and a canon on the Gianicolo Hill would boom out to mark the day. It memory serves, noon was the real mark of a day because it could be more easily identified than midnight, for obvious reasons. Thus also, the nautical day began at noon, as Capt. Aubrey would surely explain were he here. There is, at SM degli Angeli another pin-hole camera set up for the the star Polaris, though I am not sure how that worked.
If you keep your eyes open when walking around in Rome, you will start spotting everywhere sundials of one type or other. Off the top of my head I can picture one built into the wall of what was once the Jesuit Collegio Romano. At P.za Montecitorio there is one built into the pavement with one of the 13 ancient obelisks as the gnomon (shadow caster). That obelisk had actually been the gnomon of August Caesar’s sundial. The obelisk of St. Peter’s Square casts a shadow on a large clock/calendar in the pavement. There are lots of others, as well.
More later.
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