This year my escape from winter in Canada was a trip to Portugal. This offered warm sunshine, scenic sea coast, and an opportunity to stay in the castles and palaces of bygone times. Like many of you, when I travel, I search for sundials. This provides a focus for exploration and often provides a unique window on the people, culture, architecture and history. The search for sundials forces an attention to detail that often brings unexpected rewards.
Our first objective was well satisfied on the Algarve Coast of southern Portugal. This provided warmth, sunshine and spectacular scenery along the coastal trail while the rest of Europe was being blasted with storms bringing record wind, rain and snow. The fantasy of staying in luxury in medieval castles was well satisfied by the Pousadas of Portugal, where old castles have been revamped to provide first class tourist accommodations. See http://www.pousadas.pt or the mirror site at http://www.pousadas.com. The search for sundials was a bust. We found only half a dozen in three weeks. Sundials are just not part of Portuguese culture. But armillary spheres are. They were everywhere, so we changed the rules of engagement and began searching for armillary spheres. The mother lode was found in Lisbon. On the Paprado dos Descobrimentos, I stood on the first point of Aries of an 30 meter armillary sphere laid out in the paving stones and counted 25 armillary spheres visible from that point. On the seafront, the monument to Prince Henry the Navigator and the Age of Discovery prominently featured armillary spheres. Looking inland, the Jeronimos Monastery featured armillary spheres on the spires, capitals and fretwork. All the flagpoles and even streetlights were crowned with armillary spheres. This symbol is a key part of the architecture. Why? This all started with Prince Henry the Navigator who brought together astronomers, mathematicians, cartographers and instrument makers at Sagres to establish a school teaching the science and technology of navigation. These skills in navigation allowed the sailors who embarked on the great voyages of discovery, to know where they were and how to get back to where they started. Prince Henry was a true Renaissance Man, applying the science and technology known by the Greeks, Romans and Moors, to bring European "civilisation" out of the dark ages. The evocative site of his school of navigation at Sages, the barren windswept point of Cape Vincent, was the limit of the world known to Europeans and the point of departure for the voyages of discovery to the Azores, Brazil, Africa, and around to India and the Spice Islands. The principles of this navigation technology were simple. The world is not flat but round. You will not sail off the edge of the world. Each day, measure the maximum altitude of the sun. This will tell you where on earth you are. These principles are captured in the armillary sphere. The inner sphere represents the earth. The surrounding rings represent the celestial sphere. The tilted ring shows the path of the sun moon and planet through the year along the ecliptic. In the 16th century, the exploitation of navigation technology brought to Portugal tremendous wealth and power. Henry's nephew, Manuel I, King of Portugal from 1490 to 1520, was a key beneficiary of this enterprise. Manuel adopted the armillary sphere as his royal symbol. This symbol expresses the theme "Technology conquers the Universe". It is incorporated as a key feature in Manueline architecture as the new found wealth was poured into the construction of palaces, castles, cathedrals and monasteries. This is the legacy that we found on our tour of Portugal. The armillary sphere of Manueline architecture is a symbol. It is a poor portrayal of the navigational instrument, computer or sundial. The image is generally a bunch of rings, with one skewed at an odd angle from the others, with no numbers, scales or signs. But what a strong symbol of power of technology. Our souvenir of the trip is a tile, not the typical Portuguese "azulejos", but a copy of the armillary sphere tiles we saw at the "Palacio National de Sintra", in the fountain room of the royal summer palace of Dom Manuel I. My advice to travellers remains the same. Search for sundials. It is amazing where that search can lead you. This topic on armillary spheres warrants further exploration. Roger Bailey Walking Shadow Designs N 51 W 115
