Hi Frank, I share your puzzle. A friend of mine also sent a picture of the San Gimignano dial. I have been unable to interpret it as a sundial. The cardinal points and scrolling circles might serve some function for a horizontal sundial but they make no sense if this is suppose to be a vertical declining dial.
Can I send you a fuzzy scanned enlargement of the photo as a 328 kb bit map (.bmp)? Roger Bailey Walking Shadow Designs N48.6 W 123.4 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Frank Evans Sent: August 8, 2004 5:38 AM To: sundial@rrz.uni-koeln.de Subject: italian dial Greetings fellow dialists, Can anyone please help me to decipher this: I have been sent a picture, by a friend, of an Italian presumed dial on the wall of Sant' Agostino church in San Gimignano, Tuscany. It has a horizontal gnomon which is a simple shaft. Around it are drawn eight circles which are not concentric but each touching the next circle outwards at one point, mostly horizontally, alternatively left and right but the inner circles touching at 45 degrees to the horizontal. Additionally there are two rather flat ellipses drawn obliquely round the centre point. What I take to be cardinal points, the letters N, S, E and O are marked as well as the intercardinals E, T and C (nothing for south-east). My friend writes that the dial faces roughly south south east. There are no hour marks. My picture is a close-up and I am unable to guess a scale. I am totally baffled. Any suggestions? Frank 55N 1W -- Frank Evans [EMAIL PROTECTED] - -
