"How late is it ? And make sure……" Top 5 Page for this destination Speyer Local Custom Tip by Trekki

… your fish is big enough
Altpörtel, the town gate and tower of Speyer (see to-do tip), has some fascinating features, about which I’d learned only recently. One is the two clocks, which, if one looks closer, show different parts of “the time”. The big clock is only to give the hour and the smaller beneath to give the minutes. This was made in the old days, to help the people approaching the town from the west to see how late it is. Well, this is what the exhibition in Altpörtel tells. It still works, as anyone who is coming from far away, will see the gate tower and can tell if he/she is in time for a date or has to hurry.

The other interesting feature is inside the gateway of the tower: in photo 3 you see an iron bar, mounted inside of the wall. This is the so-called “Speyrer Normalmaß”, something like a calibration standard, also from old days. It was meant to measure the sizes of fish and other goods and is exactly 12 inches in length.

A similar measurement standard is in Heidelberg, see what Christine.j wrote about pretzel size standard.
Other old measurement standards are in Dornoch (Scotland), cloth size (by Joan, @scotishvisitor), Venezia, fish scale and in Norcia, measuring grain.