Visit the picturesque Swiss valley preserving the art of watchmaking

27.12.2023 - 19:57 / nationalgeographic.com

Although the birth of luxury timepieces are often associated with Geneva and Basel, the cradle of Swiss watchmaking lies deep in Switzerland’s Jura Mountains. Since 1748, the postcard-worthy Vallée de Joux has been the birthplace of world-renowned watch brands, including Audemars Piguet, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and David Candaux. 

An hour’s drive from Geneva, the Vallée de Joux protects 26 traditional watch farms that scatter the hillsides, where watchmakers once spent long winters perfecting pocket watches and wristwatches. Although most of these watch farms are no longer functional—climate change and the industrial revolution forced family businesses to migrate to larger factories in the city—their multimillion dollar legacies prove that a slow artisan craft can keep pace in a hurried high-tech world. 

“A watch is not just an object. People put their hearts into what they’re doing. It carries a little bit of soul,” says Nathalie Veysset, a watch strategist who works with master watchmaker David Candaux.  

Thanks to a surge of dedicated blogs, influencers, clubs, and second-hand watch sales, the Swiss watch industry broke records in 2022, with exports rising to a new all-time record high of $27.5 billion, due to a rush of luxury spending over the pandemic.

Many of the valley’s flagship brands have opened their doors to watch lovers from all over the world. Here’s how travelers can have an immersive horological experience—from visiting museums and workshops to participating in watchmaking classes.

Inside Olivier Piguet’s restored 19th-century watch farm is a cache of timepieces, with clocks, pocket and wristwatches, and drawers jammed full of spindly hands, buffed crystal, and rigid leather straps. Here, at the Centre d’Initiation à l’Horlogerie, travelers can spend a weekend experiencing the art of watchmaking. Students take to the benches, meticulously dismantling, oiling, and reassembling basic timepieces.

(The antique tools used to keep timeless timepieces ticking.)

Piguet, a 10th-generation watchmaker, says his family was one of the several Huguenots or Protestants that fled France from persecution during the French Wars of Religion to Switzerland in the mid-1500s. Many of the refugees moved to the Jura Mountains as farmers. Meanwhile, others, many already skilled watchmakers, flocked to the city of Geneva, transforming the Swiss watchmaking industry. 

“Historically, we have a reputation for top level quality. Our watches have been named the most complicated, the flattest, the smallest,” says Piguet. Since 2020, the craftsmanship of mechanical watchmaking and art mechanics have been inscribed on the UNESCO list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

By the 17th century, with the birth of