Rome's light, season by season
At 41.9° N, Rome runs from about 9 hours 10 minutes of daylight in December to 15 hours 10 minutes in June. Summer sunsets near 20:45 CEST fill the long Roman evenings; winter brings soft, low-angle light through the middle of the day — the reason the city's ochre walls photograph so well off-season.
The Rome meridian quirk
Rome sits almost exactly on the old 12° E meridian — locally solar noon matches the clock better than almost any capital in Europe, landing between 12:10 and 13:10 depending on DST. Trust the golden-hour windows for the Tiber and the domes: the western horizon past the Gianicolo hill is clean, and the calculator's times line up with what the sky actually does.
Sources and standards
Where these figures come from
Every formula on this page is implemented from the published reference material below. Where a value depends on a regional code, the calculator lets you override it rather than assuming one jurisdiction.
- NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory — Solar Calculator — the solar position algorithm underlying sunrise, sunset and solar noon.
- NASA Science — Sun — solar geometry and the definition of civil, nautical and astronomical twilight.
- NIST Time and Frequency Division — time standards and the definition of the day.
Figures, formulas and reference tables last verified: 24 September 2026.