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084 of 244. On the floor of the cathedral is a 21-meter-long brass line with marble zodiac signs. It's a meridian that could be considered as an earlier type of solar observatory. It functions as a giant sundial. Back in the 1700s, an astronomer, Giuseppe Piazzi, put a tiny hole in one of the minor domes acting as a pinhole camera. At noon, a ray of light hits that line, and it tells you the season and the signs of the zodiac throughout the year.