The RTC is updated in real time at one-second intervals in Normal mode for the counters of seconds, at one-minute intervals for the counter of minutes and so on.
Due to the asynchronous operation of the RTC with respect to the rest of the chip, to be certain that the value read in the RTC registers (century, year, month, date, day, hours, minutes, seconds) are valid and stable, it is necessary to read these registers twice. If the data is the same both times, then it is valid. Therefore, a minimum of two and a maximum of three accesses are required.