On 2016-10-21 23:43, Paul Eggert wrote about the INRIM tables on legal time in Italy:
First, do their tables reflect Italian legal time, or the time that was observed on the ground in Rome? The difference might matter during the period of German occupation of Rome, roughly from 1943-09-10 to 1944-06-04.
INRIM can only disseminate time as determined by law or decree or order issued before the fact. What the Romans do is always a different matter, and is difficult to determine 70 years later. Besides, in recent cases where legal time has been observed to differ from widespread usage (eg Turkey), the tz database describes legal time. For 1967..1979, all steps in the Italian time scale were announced in the "Gazzetta Ufficiale", as required by the law: "legge 1144 del 1966-12-24" in [http://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:1966-12-24;1144] The list in [http://www.ac-ilsestante.it/MERIDIANE/ora_legale/ORA_LEGALE_ESTIVA_IN_ITALIA...]. gives all these announcements. For the time of occupation, this source also cites a Genovese newspaper -- which is still prescriptive. It also quotes a law from 1866 about zone times in Sardegna and Sicilia. Anyway, these sources seem to agree with the tables of INRIM. The latest discrepancy from the tz database time scale Europe/Rome is in 1974, well after the somewhat-arbitrary cutoff at 1970. Michael Deckers.