The church of Sant Pol in Sant Joan de les Abadesses (Girona), gets his old sundial.

When it comes almost only look to the phone, a sundial again preside over the everyday grind of santjoanins. On Saturday April 9th, who go under the church of Sant Pol and raise the view of the south facade of the tower will know the time with this ancient system of measuring time, as it had been for centuries. The sundial there has instalated occupies the same place that he had been since the seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth century, but new construction.

On a large block of marble Senia 300 kilos, have set numbers of hours, the lines of the equinoxes and solstices, the traditional images of the sun and the moon and the slogan presiding watch: "Tempus omnia revealed." That is to say, "Time reveals everything," chosen by the writer Ramon Santjoan Cotrina. Comes to say that "if you want something that is known, did not do so sooner or later, time will reveal," he explains in a text written for the occasion.

The initiative to recover the clock was Ramon Vila, a member of the Board of the Monastery of San Juan. "Since childhood I had seen, when numbers were already deleted, but had been a regret." Villa moved heaven and earth, obtained the support of the City and was involved Cotrina Ramon and designer Jordi pipes. And most of them, a key figure in the whole process: the Olot Clara Francis, a retired engineer who has made the design of sundials his specialty: he makes the calculations and determine the exact position in which place cabbage should. Before the inauguration, on Clara explained the secrets of his work in a lecture at the Abbey Palace. He recalled, for example, that the sundial was the method human ancestral measuring time, and even when they left early and inaccurate mechanical clocks were used the sun to give them the hour. Before indicated the exact time and date, because of changes that have been introduced with respect to solar time, when they advanced one hour in winter and two hours when it is summer. But still an enduring symbol. "It was necessary to watch, but as a reminder, as a recovery of a piece of our history," says Cotrina. And to make it even clearer, the Sant Joan has respected the only part that had been the old clock: the gnomon, metallic rod that projects the shadow on the surface of the sundial.(Jordi Vilarrodà)

Source: El 9 Nou

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