Sundial in Tirrenia (Pisa)
Latitude 43° 37' 38" N - Longitude 10° 17' 23" E
This spot of light equatorial sundial, which has as ancestors two historical astronomical instrument: the Hipparchus cicle and partly the Eratosthenes armillary sphere, was built inside the large central flowerbed in Belvedere square, the main square of Tirrenia, the town destined by the founders to become the "Pearl of the Tyrrhenian Sea" thanks to the enchanting sandy beaches and a fervent urban planning. Tirrenia from 1934 to 1969 was the Italian Hollywood thanks to the Tirrenia Film Studios, then Pisorno and finally Cosmopolitan Film; in fact, this sundial is inspired by the historical and now almost forgotten vocation of Tirrenia as a cinema city. Andrej Tarkovskij argues that cinema is the sculpture of time; this sundial represents the privileged relationship between the Seventh Art and time, understood both as cinematographic time and time as connection with Nature's rhythms. The fundamental elements of this sundial metaphorically recall a film projection: the projector lamp is the Sun, the wrapped stylized film with the frames (the hours of the day) to be enlarged and projected on the screen (the polar quadrant). The cinematographic film arranged in a circle, a circle oriented and inclined like the celestial equator, acts as a spot of light gnomon as it has engraved numbers indicating the hours of the day from 6 to 18. The numbers are projected on the polar quadrant on which the line to identify the hours is also drawn. The quadrant is parallel to the Earth's axis and therefore points towards the North Star. The simple reading of this sundial derives from its very structure, it is only necessary to follow the number (light spot) projected by the gnomon on the central quadrant line during the day. The sundial provides the true local time of Tirrenia, which can be converted into civil time thanks to the Equation of Time. This sundial was made in AISI 316 steel by the Lambardi company of Pisa.
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