Dispatch: Scenes From The Swatch Museum

Editors’ Picks

A few months ago, I took the train from Geneva to Biel to visit Swatch for a tour through the brand's Sistem51 movement factory and was thoroughly impressed by the operation. As a bonus, I was delighted to learn that the Swatch Museum was located just steps away from Swatch's corporate headquarters, itself just a brief walk from my outpost of the Biel Courtyard Marriott.

Cité du Temps houses both Swatch and Omega museums and connects to Swatch HQ.

It's free to the public, sharing the same building as Omega's museum. Covering a broad range of models since the brand's inception in 1983, the Swatch museum has so much to see that I went twice during my time in Biel and still didn't get to see everything. Along the entire side of the museum are vertical displays, much like you see in Swatch stores, with every year of Swatch organized in sections. These sections don't contain everything from that year, but do a great job of showing off the highlights – the team there periodically refreshes these displays to keep things fresh. But unlike most watch museums (or any museum, really), there is no glass here. Those watches very much beckon you to come close, and yes, as long as you're careful, you can touch them. Of course, a lot of the rare releases are behind glass, organized in many different displays throughout the space.

The Head of Heritage at Swatch, Philippe Marti, gave me a tour through the space, and I got a chance to chat with him for a while on what it means to probably have the most fun heritage job in the industry. One of the benefits of the Swatch brand being so (relatively) young, combined with the significantly lower cost of production compared to the models of the other brands with museums, he tells me, is the ability for the brand to have maintained a significant archive of essentially everything in its collection since day one. So it's no surprise that, aside from some of the original prototypes, the museum showcases many of the funkiest models and packaging in amazing condition, as if you were buying them in store the year of launch. Of course, this also presents some unique challenges – plastic yellowing and deterioration are issues that watches in steel or precious metal don't have to deal with as much.

While none of the Swatches in the museum are for sale, right next door is the world's only drive-through Swatch store. Yes, here you can pull up in your car, order a watch directly through the speaker system, and drive up to pick it up. Perhaps some other brands should give this retail model a shot in suburbia. And yes, when a new Moonswatch comes out, Swatch employees are also lining up at this store to pick one up (no shortcuts here).

Nothing will replace coming here for real, and if you're a Swatch fan, it's a place to add to your horological bucket list. But in the meantime, here are a few photos to bring some of that Swatch fun from Biel to your screen.