Geneva’s watch heritage: A historian’s perspective
Geneva’s history of horology began well before it reached the city walls in the mid-16th century, when Protestant reformer Jean Calvin banned the wearing of jewellery as being too ostentatious forcing goldsmiths and other specialised craftsmen to turn to watchmaking. This quickly led to the development of Geneva’s now five century old watching making industry.
As with much of Europe, Switzerland began producing mechanical, weight-driven clocks installed in churches, town halls and city gates in the Middle Ages. “These were initially large clocks, but people then began reducing them in size for the well-to-do to be placed in salons gradually popularizing the use of time pieces,” explains Estelle Fallet in her office where she has been preparing a new exhibition at the Museum of Art & History (MAH) on mechanical music boxes, another Swiss tradition. (15 March – 17 August 2025).
Music box and clock at the Geneva Museum of Art and Histtory
MAH
Clocks: A way of engaging people
The purpose of these clocks was communal to mark the hours audibly, such as announcing church services, since few people could afford personal timepieces. Such early Swiss clocktowers still exist, such as the Zytglogge in Bern with moving figures, zodiac signs and a mechanical show, St Peters in Zurich (Europe’s largest church clock), the Cathedral and Town Hall clocks of Lausanne, and multiple 14th-15th century clocks built into the city walls of Lucerne.
“Another key factor is that these timepieces represented new technology, or high science, which carries on today with Geneva’s watch industry where everything is based on innovation, research and refined design,” Fallet points out.
Some of the early characteristics of these early Swiss clocks is that they had large, iron gear trains as well as striking mechanisms to chime bells on the hour. Many village clocks, too, rang twice for the benefit of farmers of in the field in case they missed the first chime. Some of the more elaborate clocks included astronomical features, such a moon phases and calendars, while others were adorned with moving figures, notably jousting knights, roosters, saints and symbolic figures denoting Death, Time and Justice.
Bern's Zytglogge clock tower
Bern Tourism
From ‘general’ local craftsmanship to specialisation
Most of these were produced and maintained by local artisan workshops specializing in large-scale mechanisms, forging iron components, and designing striking mechanisms. Some were not necessarily specialised in horology but also worked for the municipality. As time went on, and technology progressed, they evolved into smaller scale craftsmen learning how to make more specialised spring-driven mechanisms.
By the 15th century, portable spring-driven time mechanisms began to emerge in Germany and France, but public clocks continued to dominate in Switzerland. It was only with Calvin’s imposed reforms drastically overturning the gold and jewellery industries coupled with the arrival of Huguenot refugees, many of them skilled watchmakers, that the art of precision watchmaking took off in Geneva and Switzerland.
St Bartholomew massacre in France prompted thousands of Huguenot Protestants to flee to Switzerland.
Museum
A matter of prestige…and looking good
“Today, Swiss watches, mainly wrist watches, are all about prestige and show,” says Fallet. “This look is also very much masculine-dominated. Men want elaborately designed highly technological watches, such as diving watches, even if they don’t dive. It provides them with an image of style showing that they are into sports.”
The Swiss watch manufacturer Blancpain, for example, deliberately markets its dive watches, such as the Fifty Fathoms Tech-Ocean Commitment IV, to appeal to this group of buyers and collectors. As one Blancpain technician himself admitted, maybe one percent of owners will ever take their watches diving.
There is also a fascination with what happens inside the watch, even if hidden, Fallet notes. As a result, some men’s watches deliberately expose the intricate inside mechanisms based on the latest technology enabling the owner to behold what makes this exceptional time-piece function. “But this, too, is a matter of prestige and showing off,” she says.
“Women, on the other hand, want less technology but rather beautiful watches to wear as a form of jewellery. It is all about being perceived,” Fallet maintains.
Swiss watchmaking workshop
Museum
The lure of Swiss watchmaking
Even with countries like China and Japan producing equally exceptional watches, the lure is not the same. People want Swiss watches, and they come to Geneva to buy them. “There is an aura about Swiss horology, something which the Asia and the Middle East simply cannot offer,” she says.
Some buyers, too, like to be involved in the actual making of a watch, a process that can sometimes take up to two years. “It is like giving birth,” says Fallet.
A vintage Breguet watch
Sothebys'
Appealing to individuals and collectors
One watchmaker in Carouge, for example, a part of old Geneva, produces no more than five or six watches a year. Some cost up to 300,000 CHF each, with the buyer flying in from Dubai or Singapore, to spend time with the watchmaker. In this manner, they become part of the creation by contributing their ideas. “Once again, it is all about prestige and showing off,” Fallet points out. “This includes young people, who don’t want watches to tell them the time, but wish to show off. At the same time, they are moved by the history and the aura behind luxury watchmaking.”
While Geneva’s Museum of Art and Art does not have a permanent watch collection, it often has historical exhibits, such as its current focus on mechanical music boxes, a tradition that began at the end of the 18th century and is closely linked to Switzerland’s watch industry. As Vallet points out, the exhibition showcases the same “subtlety of the mechanisms designed by watchmakers and art mechanics” and whose art is now inscribed in UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
“Everything you see about watches is connected. They represent something for one’s imagination, one’s own personal story,” says Fallet, who first became involved in horology working at the watch museum in La Chaux de Fonds in the Swiss Jura, a traditional watch-making centre. “I was fascinated by the ateliers with craftsmen working on watches, jewellery and enamelling. They are all interlinked and strongly remain part of our heritage.”
Watch making in the Jura
Watch Museum La Chaux de Fonds
Watch collecting: Pre-owned, Reloved
Collectors, who do not necessarily want something new, are buying into the same myth. They want something iconic and classical, particularly second-hand vintage wrist watches dating back to the 1920s along the lines of ‘Preowned. Reloved’.
“It is part of an investment, but it is also contagious,” explains Fallet. “Even in difficult times there is a market and the prices keep rising. It is something that collectors can feel good about.” As a result, watchmakers such as Rolex are producing special limited editions to appeal to collectors. Auction houses, too, are investing heavily in Swiss wristwatch collecting not just in Geneva but places like London, New York and Singapore.
As the world’s leading watch centre, Geneva makes a strong point of cultivating this image. Looking back over five centuries, the industry has had its ups and down, particularly during the “Quartz Revolution” of the 1970s and 80s when cheap Japanese, American and other watch producing countries largely replaced traditional mechanical watches.
The Poinçon de Genève (Geneva Seal)
Geneva Tourism
Swiss watches: Tradition, quality and innovation
Caught up in a disastrous economic crisis, the Swiss watch industry had to completely re-think its approach. “It chose to remain with traditional, but extremely high quality and technologically advanced prestige watches and by investing in what Switzerland does best, notably the personal and historical attraction of high quality: banks, chocolate and watches,” Fallet notes.
For this image, it relies heavily on Switzerland’s historic watchmaking heritage.
“It is this persistence with high quality, including the Poinçon de Genève, that is ensuring its survival, even with current economic downturns,” she says. “The ‘Poinçon’, or Geneva Seal for wristwatches,” Vallet adds, “is very important as it is also integrated into the city’s watchmaking schools, museums and sales points by firmly establishing a historical memory of Geneva watchmaking.”
Introduced in 1886, this official seal of the City and Canton of Geneva represents a quality emblem of the Geneva Watchmaking School as officially defined by law. To be granted certification, watchmakers must prove that its wristwatch movements have been made in Geneva. Although mainly concerned with the finishing and decoration of the watch, it serves as the ultimate recognition of the Geneva watch industry.
Swiss-American Global Geneva editor Edward Girardet is a foreign correspondent and author who has reported wars, humanitarian crises and global issues for more than 40 years.