In the city of La Chaux-de-Fonds and its little sister, Le Locle-the-clock specifies the clock. Since 2009, they are part of the UNESCO world heritage site. The watchmaker’s metropolis is a place full of unexpected treasures.
Surrounded by meadows and pastures, you suddenly appears, the watch manufacturer Le Cartier, only a few hundred meters away from the other big luxury brands Tissot and Breitling. In addition, grazing cows.
The Silicon Valley in the watch industry, so call the inhabitants of La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle proud of her at first glance so unimpressive acting watch Paradise. Here, where once the peasants were in the long and cold winters with magnifying glasses and tweezers at the window. In addition to the grandfather clock you can find in a farmhouse from 1612, today a Museum, is also the son of a fork. And a hook is still the old watchmaker’s coat.
The farmer as a watchmaker
Unusually cold summer day in La Chaux-de-Fonds, which is located at almost 1000 meters height in the middle of the Jura. And so you can imagine the harsh Winter, in which the farmers of its watchmaking activities were formally.
The window seat: the light source and the work table
Industry architecture as a world heritage site
Like a chessboard, La-Chaux-de-Fonds, designed to meet the needs of the watchmaking industry customized. With wide streets for plenty of light, the most important Utensil of the watchmaker. The villas in the art Nouveau style of the formerly rich watchmaking families in addition to workers ‘ housing. And everywhere, the addiction to it takes place, the large and bright window of the watchmaker’s workshops, and watch factories. This exceptional urban landscape, has prompted the UNESCO, La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle in 2009 in the world heritage list.
Watch manufactory Election of 1920
Unlike in London or the Geneva end of the 19th century is here. Century from the arts and crafts industry, from the next acquisition of the farmers work for all. So, it holds its own against the competition from America. At the beginning of the 20th century. Century more than half the world watches sold come from La Chaux-de-Fonds, that counts as 40,000 inhabitants.
Flowers, fir trees and mosaics
The former Vulcain, well-known for their Präsidentenuhr, which graced the wrist of Eisenhower and Nixon, was founded in 1858 in La Chaux-de-Fonds. In the disused factory chic Lofts have been created, but the input range, then you can visit the: wood he is paneled, with ornate banisters.
Delicate leaves and flowers: art Nouveau in La Chaux-de-Fonds
“This beautiful building should show that you have taste and was a quasi-advertising”, explained tour guide round Buehler, who has the key to many other hidden art Nouveau in La Chaux-de-Fonds: the staircase paintings or the crematorium, with its ornaments, frescoes and urns with fir tree motif. Typical of La Chaux-de-Fonds, surrounded by fir trees.
The most famous watchmakers son of the city
Firs adorn the Villa Fallet Le Corbusier, high up in La Chaux-de-Fonds. To get there, one must strive a little bit, but it’s worth it. Just 18 years old, to Le Corbusier, when he designed the art Nouveau-style building in 1906. Who stands in front of it, you can have a glimpse of the genius of the later so famous architects.
The Villa Fallet Le Corbusier
Also Le Corbusier, comes from a family of Watchmakers and because the son seems to be good-for-nothing trades if you send him at the age of 13 to art school. Here he learns how to decorated watches, but it is also awakened his passion for architecture. That light is important, this wisdom of the watchmaker flows later in his architectural work. Bathed in light, is also Turque Villa, another house designed by Le Corbusier, which he realized in 1916 on behalf of a wealthy watch manufacturer from La Chaux-de-Fonds.
A treasure chamber full of clocks
Almost everyone you talk to here, is with a watchmaker’s family is known or related. As Nathalie Marielloni from the International watch Museum. A place where it is hard to forget the time: right at the entrance is announced via loudspeaker seconds exactly, the time. Nathalie Marielloni is an absolute Uhrenfan. She so elated by the Museum, with its more than 3400 large and small, ticking the objects that one is literally infected by this enthusiasm. Of watches, which are as thin as a 1-francs piece, to richly enamelled watch cases – all can be found here. A few million cost, the most expensive watch in the watch Cabinet. What this is, is not, however, betray. On the question of whether the residents are surrounded here by so much movement, especially on time, is obtained by Nathalie Marielloni a Laugh. “Yes, this is simply culturally determined.”
Small Works Of Art: Enamel Watches
Luxury watches against the crisis
It is probably also due to this almost tender love watches, that La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle have survived the quartz crisis of the 1970s, which has made the people here so hard. Thousands were unemployed, the machines which were suddenly worthless, from the Windows thrown in. Today, the story of La-Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle have claimed in the luxury segment. Only two to three percent of the watches in the world come from Switzerland, but they make up more than half of the profit. New watch factories about Hermes and Dior have created in the Region, in addition to those who have always been there.
In the Zenith of time
As the company Zenith Locle in Le. 25.000 watches are produced here per year, and more than 80 different professions working under one roof. All it takes for a watch.
Zenith: a Tradition for over 150 years
Before one is allowed to enter the Studio, it is called scrubs and plastic shoes leather. Blame it on the dust. “Enemy no 1 of the watchmaker,” explains Timothée Flückiger, who is now in charge of the leadership. In 1865 the manufactory was founded in Le Locle, one of the first watch factories in the world. To produce somewhere else watches it here in Zenith yet never thought of.
Love at second sight
Because, even if hardly anyone knows the cities, where the major Swiss watch brands are produced and Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds hinschlummern a bit like sleeping beauty in front of you: Those who live here, are aware of their secret treasure. It is the place where the heart of the Swiss watch industry has been beating for centuries. Actually, you can’t go here without at home: to Whom, however, a Breitling, or Tissot is too expensive, can’t reach for the chocolate variant. Beautiful, sweet, and completely timeless.