So we were on the tour bus in Barcelona, passing by all kinds of  interesting buildings. And suddenly I spot a church that seems to have 2 sundials on its bell tower.  Chris was not looking in the same direction, and so when we hopped off the bus at the next stop to find something to eat, I suggested that after lunch we retrace the path of the bus  and find those 2 sundials.

Luckily, this church was not as elusive to find as the one on the hill. And it turned out that there were not 2, but 3 different sundials visible on the top of the church. Cool!  The fourth side of the bell tower isn’t visible from the street, blocked by the building next door, so it’s not clear if that would have had a sundial, too.

First have a look at the 3 dials that are on the church, and then we’ll talk a little about them:

Now, I know what your thinking. Why are there 3 (or more) sundials on this bell tower? And how do you read all those sundials? Good questions.

Unfortunately, there was no sign on the side of the church that explained the sundials. The three are labelled in Latin as follows:

1. Anno Domini (“Year of the Lord”). That seems to refer to the year at the bottom of the dial – maybe that was the year the church was built, or the sundial was added? I don’t quite know what would be changing on this dial as the sun’s position changes during the day, though.
2. Ora et Labora (“Pray and Work”): This one is intriguing because there are two markers for telling something on this dial according to the position of the sun. What what it’s telling us, I’m not sure.
3. Tempus Brevi Est (“Time is Short”): Presumably this proverb is the same as Tempus Fugit (“Time flies”). I suppose this one could actually be telling the time, like most sun dials do. But again, that’s just my guess.  It seems to read around “1:30 pm”, which have been the correct time.

OK, so now you’re probably also wondering what the name of this church is, so you could look it up on the Internet to try to find out the information yourself.

Well, unfortunately I don’t know. Typically I try to take a photo of the sign on the church in situations like this, so I’ll have the name of the church for reference. However, I took a dozen or more photos of those sundials, and no pictures of any other part of the church. I don’t even remember seeing a sign on the side of the church, actually. Go figure.

Must have been the sun(dials) in my eyes. 😉