Sundials from Around the World

During a short stay in Australia, I was guided in Adelaide's city center by Peter Mayer, a sundial enthousiast and user of the Shadows program.

The Cap Ferrat, next to Nice City, is full of luxurious villas, but contains also a lot of painted sundials.

In Beaulieu-sur-Mer, the neighbour city you can visit the Kerylos villa, a greek museum which is hosting two sundials, one facing the East, the other one the West.

During a guided visit of the Forbidden City, I photographed the three equatorial sundial that are inside the city. They are all different and engraved.

The great view on the Chicago buildings facing the lake Michigan, seen from the Adler planétarium. A large equatorial sundial can be seen in front of the planetarium.

London is a very nice city where you can easily see sundials. The bell tower of the church Saint Margaret (next to Westminster Abbey) has four sundials, one on each face. Next to it, you can see an analemmatic sundial. The four sundials on St Margaret's were designed Christopher St.J. Daniel. The analemmatic sundial was designed by Frank King for the Golden Jubilee of HM the Queen.

At the Greenwich Royal Observatory, you can stand on the prime meridian, in front of a big equatorial sundial. In the building, an interesting exhibition displays astronomical instruments, portable sundials, astronomical rings and astrolabes. You can also see the great clocks of Harrison which allowed, during the 18th century, to solve the famous problem of the evaluation of the longitude.

The Griffith observatory, in Los Angeles has an equatorial sundial in engraved bronze, next to the obelisk celebrating the great astronomers.

Monaco contains several nice sundials, among which the great gnomonic complex of Fontvieille. The two sundial in the port display the watch time, each of them during six months.

Tokyo has only a few sundials and they are quite modern. Three horizontal sundials are installed by shrines. The cardioid sundial is quite interesting with the time given by a numeral cast on the cylinder at the center.
I had the opportunity to visit the Seiko museum, thanks to Yukio Ono, member of the Japan Sundial Society. This museum displays some ancient sundials, some from China, and has a lot of portable sundials in wood, metal or ivory.
Finally, the National Observatory of Mitaka, a city located west of Tokyo, has a conical equatorial sundial in front of its main entrance.

During my stay in Warsaw, I had the chance to see quite a lot of sundials.