Sundial in Entraigues

During your visit to the Arvan valley, discover the hamlet of Entraigues and its well-preserved heritage: its church, the sundial and the traditional habitat representative of the valley.
You can also contemplate the hamlet of Entraigues and take a 45-minute walk towards Mollard de la Croix.

The sundial, a curiosity to discover!

Nestled in the hollow of a valley at the confluence of the Arvette and the Arvan, the church of Entraigues, is a modest building, however, has one of the most beautiful and mysterious sundials in Savoy.
With its elegant shape, its harmonious colors, its balanced proportions, its enigmatic signs, it stands out radically from the usual ornamentation of sundials.
Didier Chagot and Paul Gagnaire, members of the Astronomical Society of France, undertook an in-depth study of this particular dial. The central part indicates the solar noon of 37 places in the world, each represented by a red celestial star. The difference in longitude between these sites and Entraigues is shown by traces visible only up close.
At the bottom of the dial appears the coded name of its manufacturer, Giuseppe Gibello and the year of construction 1843. At the top of the screen we can read the motto "I refuse to tell the time if the sun is silent" near the representation of a compass, a set square, a protractor, a lead wire, so many elements that do not correspond to religious iconography.

What message did the sundial maker want to convey? Who exactly was he? We know little or nothing about him. And finally who had ordered the realization of this work? A very mysterious dial with a strange beauty, superbly restored since 1999, and which retains a large part of its mystery.