Császárkő Sundial

While walking across the spacious main square of Szombathely, I stopped by an unusual sundial shaped as a stone disk roughly two metres in diameter. Metal medallions depicting Roman emperors are set into its surface, with the functional part of the sundial placed at the centre.

From Hungarian-language online sources, automatically translated by my browser, I learned that the artwork was created by metal sculptor János Blaskó and master stonemason Péter Csingér. It was unveiled in 2007. Its name, Császárkő (“Emperor’s Stone”), refers to the Roman heritage of this place, dating back to the founding of Colonia Claudia Savaria in the 1st century AD.