Hello and welcome to my site! My name is Riccardo Anselmi. I was born in San Remo in 1935 and I’ve lived in Saint-Vincent in Aosta Valley in the Italian Alps for the last 30 years. I’ve spent many years of my life working abroad: in Tripoli in Libya, London, the Isle of Man and Swaziland. In 1982 I wrote a book about games of chance. In 1996 the Mondadori publishing house published a new, updated edition of the book under the title "A Guide to Games of Chance". Since 1983 I’ve become interested in Gnomonics, the science of sundials. It all began by chance one day when looking up at the wall of my house I was gripped by the impulse to decorate it with a sundial.

After searching, in vain, for a gnomonist to do it for me, I decided to try my hand at it myself. I went straight to work and, thanks to my innate passion for mathematics, I succeeded in writing a computer program quite quickly, which I used to do the necessary calculations for my first sundial, made of iron and decorated with copper inscriptions.

It was like a flash of inspiration and since then I’ve produced many sundials, sometimes in collaboration with craftsmen and women, combining my science with their art.

The passion for mathematics has pushed me on to find new solutions to old problems. I’ve created numerous Gnomonics software programs including some for calculating dials on curved surfaces. These pages are dedicated to all those who love sundials and would like to know more about them. The purpose of this site is to convert the off-hand visitor to the cause, increasing awareness and helping those who, having seen an old sundial, would like to find out its purpose and meaning. To this end, I have made available, not only a variety of photographs and graphic images of sundials but also some computer programs which deal with the technical aspects of sundials, enormously facilitating understanding and production.

Finally, there are some links which allow you to access other Gnomonics sites with whose authors I am personally connected, not only through our common passion but also through reciprocal esteem.