Young and dynamic luxury watch brand, Manufacture Royale passionately follows two watchmaking traditions – the Swiss and the French.

The idea of creating the Manufacture Royale watch company traces its origins to the age of Enlightenment, when Voltaire, one of the greatest French philosophers of the 18th century, established his own watchmaking workshop near Geneva in 1770.

In 2010, almost 250 years after the foundation of Voltaire’s “Manufacture Royale des Montres de Ferney”, the iconic brand name was relaunched. Manufacture Royale, inspired by the works and insights of Voltaire, is using the watchmaking tradition of the past, but giving it a modern twist. The company’s essence, whose watches are designed and manufactured in workshops located in the Swiss canton of Jura, is defined by the pursuit of the creative freedom envisaged by Voltaire.

Honoring Voltaire’s legacy, Manufacture Royale watches defy convention and champion individual liberty and expression.

Arnaud Faivre, French entrepreneur and CEO of Manufacture Royale, echoes the words of Voltaire that "great minds think alike." Confirmation of these words was the release of the high complication Opera watch, which incorporates tourbillon and minute repeater mechanisms. The porthole-style case is designed to telescopically extend, transforming the watch into a shell-shaped bell which provides a perfect acoustics for the repeater’s chiming gongs. It took three years for master watchmakers Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini of Fabrique du Temps to develop this exclusive movement.

Honoring Voltaire’s legacy, Manufacture Royale watches defy convention and champion individual liberty and expression. The brand produces an incredibly limited quantity of 120 watches a year, and these watches are meant for those who value bold and even opinion-polarizing designs.