Fondazione De Benedetti Cherasco 1547

Restoration Works

Restoration of Sundials

The Sundials on the Municipal Tower of Cherasco

In keeping with the Foundation's goal of highlighting the Napoleonic period, in 1999, on the first anniversary of the death of Gian Giacomo DeBenedetti, his son Benedetto, together with friends Arturo Tagliaferro and Bruno Taricco, decided to complete the restoration of the French-hour sundial, affixed on Cherasco's Municipal Tower.

Following a preliminary analysis prepared by Lucio Maria Morra, creator of the sundial in Fossano, it quickly came to light that beneath the French-hour sundial, there was an older sundial, showing Italic time. The more antique, presumably 18th century, sundial had been replaced by the French-hour dial, due to the construction of several tall buildings overshadowing a part of the tower. Between 1999 and 2000, Mario Tebenghi and Lucio Maria Morra restored both sundials.

Eighteenth Century Italic Hour Sundial

The project, begun in the spring of 1999, was executed by Lucio Maria Morra. The intervention involved re-installation of the gnomon (the part of a sundial that casts a shadow), conservation and reinforcement of the original quadrant, redefinition of the demarcation lines and of the relative graphics, and the pictorial refinement of the whole.

The sundial's new motto is drawn from the title of Primo Levi's collected poems – Ad ora incerta (At an Uncertain Hour).

Sundials - Technical Details in Italian (see PDF below)

Nineteenth Century French Hour Sundial

Restoration undertaken by Lucio Maria Morra and executed by Morra and by Mario Tebenghi in the spring of 2000, with the aim of reconstructing the 19th century dial based on rediscovered photographic documentation and the recovery of the original metal bracket.

This sundial's new motto is an adaptation of lines from Jacques Prévert's poem Barbara:

Je dis [tu] à tous [ceux qui s'aiment]

Même si je ne les connais pas.

I tell everyone, even if I do not know them.

Sundials - Technical Details in Italian (see PDF below)