Have you ever heard about Ora Italica(or Italian Hour, to say it in English)? Before you ask, no, it’s not a fancier expression for aperitivo time; rather, it refers to an ancient way to measure time, when the day was counted in twenty-four equal hours that started at sunset. In much of Italy, from the late Middle Ages onward, the clock rolled over not at midnight but when the sun dropped below the horizon, so the dial read “24” at day’s end and “1” just after the night began.
Interestingly, Italian museums and clock-making treatises record that, often, the passing from a day to the other was delayed by half an hour past sunset, so that it coincided with the time of the Ave Maria (hence the name Ave Maria time). This custom became formalized in what’s known as Ora Italica da campanile (the “bell-tower Italian Hour”), a small tweak indeed, but one that reveals how closely public timekeeping followed the audible rhythm of church bells in the piazza.
