Monument to the Sun

A circular glass disc 22 metres wide marks the Sun at the tip of Zadar’s old peninsula. The disc sits flush with the stone quay beside the Adriatic, its three hundred layered plates catching daylight and powering small lights that glow after sunset. Around it lie smaller discs for Mercury, Venus, Earth and the rest, each scaled to the real planets and their distances from the Sun. A chrome ring around the main circle lists the names and feast days of every saint whose church stands on the peninsula. Beside each name are figures for solar declination and the length of daylight on that date, worked out with Professor Maksim Klarin of the Zadar Maritime School. The monument turns sunlight into electricity through photovoltaic plates beneath the glass. Every year it feeds about 46 500 kilowatt-hours into the local grid, roughly half the waterfront’s needs. At night the lighting elements switch on automatically, tracing patterns on the disc and the surrounding water. The architect Nikola Bašić designed both this Sun installation and the nearby Sea Organ, so the place speaks in light by night and in sound by the sea. Visitors walk the paved quay that curves past the glass circle, reading the saints’ names and the solar data engraved on the ring. In clear weather the Adriatic stretches west to the horizon, the islands catching the last light. Smaller discs for the planets lie close at hand, each ring bearing its Croatian name and astronomical symbol. After dark the main disc becomes a shifting constellation of LEDs, reflecting on the water and marking the entrance to Zadar’s port.