Panerai

Panerai was founded in 1860 by Giovanni Panerai, who opened a watchmaker's shop and school on the Ponte alle Grazie in Florence. In the twentieth century the firm supplied precision instruments to the Italian Royal Navy, and its luminous compounds gave the two principal collections their names: Radiomir, a radium-based paste patented in 1916 and used on the prototype watches built for naval divers in 1936 around Rolex-supplied movements, and Luminor, a tritium-based substitute patented in 1949. Between 1935 and 1970 roughly 1,600 watches were delivered, almost all for military use, and the designs remained little known outside Italy until civilian sales began in 1993.

The Vendôme Group, now Richemont, acquired Panerai in 1997 and later established a manufacture in Neuchâtel while keeping the Florentine identity. The cushion-shaped case, the crown-protecting bridge of the Luminor, sandwich dials and large diameters define the current range, which includes the Radiomir, Luminor, Luminor Due and Submersible lines, many with in-house calibres.