Sundial frescoed on the church of Segrate, in Lavanderie (MI). The sundial was commissioned on the south-east facing facade, facing the little fields frequented by the oratory.

Sundials have always been made on churches, monasteries and other religious buildings, they marked the times for the liturgies and at the same time performed a public function, allowing to regulate the times of the community.

The dial of the sundial marks the real hours of Segrate and the equinoctial line. Thanks to a golden sphere placed on the stylus parallel to the earth’s rotation axis, in spring, the passage of the sphere’s shadow on the equinoctial line marks the spring equinox and the date of the following Easter.

The radiant sun with the YHS trigram in the center of the cymatium was taken from the fifteenth-century frescoes of a small church not far from the current one, in order to reaffirm the ancient Catholic roots of the community also on the new church. The blue and white of the ribbon on which the hours are written were chosen to pay homage to Mary, to whom the church is dedicated.

Two plaques have been placed under the portico at the base of the sundial: on one, the explanations of the iconographic symbols and the broader meaning of the sundial; while on the second the data necessary for the development of the timetable and the explanation for its correct use were engraved.