Review: Vacheron Constantin Tour de l’Ile Grand Complication
Forget Patek Philippe’s $8.5m Sky Moon Tourbillon with its twelve complications. That stuff’s for babies. If you want a complicated watch, with a grand total of four more than the Patek Philippe, you need the Vacheron Constantin Tour de l’Ile Grand Complication, because it is utterly outrageous. You need to stick around for this one.
Background
No one wakes up one day and decides to make the most complicated watch ever made. It’s a process that’s taken since the 16th century, when a group of French protestants fled the country alongside their leader, John Calvin. Calvin, a theologian, pastor and reformer, split from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530 after religious tensions led to violence… again.
Calvin actually originally intended to only make his way to Strasbourg on the French-German border, which was back then a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire and so a safe haven, but with the French military hot on his heels, he was forced to divert and found himself ending up in Geneva. Had he not, things would look very, very different today for Switzerland and its watchmaking empire.
How can one Protestant reformer bring about an entire watchmaking industry? Well, Calvin quickly began to establish the church of Calvinism in Geneva, which spread quickly to other Swiss cities. It was an incredibly strict form of Christianity. He was one of those, “You’re all going to hell,” types, and was a firm believer in predestination, such that you were predetermined to sin, and would therefore be going to hell based on that predetermination. That is to say, he was the fun police personified.
Included in the rather long list of sins established by Calvin were such outrageous behaviours as gambling, drinking, dancing and of course the wearing of fancy clothes and jewellery. Calvin managed to forge a relationship with the Genevan council and have these rules established in the city—but there was a problem. The flock of Protestants who’d followed Calvin from France were jewellery makers.
And they were incredibly skilled too, the best in France, but now they were useless. Or they would’ve been, had they not turned their hand to a similar and Calvin-friendly skillset: watchmaking. These newly converted watchmakers found a home in the brightly lit and secluded loft spaces of the tall Genevan buildings, away from the noise of the streets and businesses below. These attics were called cabinets, and their new occupants, “Les Cabinotiers.”
Anyway, Calvin got into another religious argument, this time about bread. Yes, bread. The council told Calvin to use unleavened bread for the Easter Eucharist, but Calvin refused, so they booted him out of town. If he’d just said yes and served pitta at Easter, again, the watchmaking scene would be very different today.
With Calvin out the way, the city of Geneva was able to make the most of its newfound skillset, producing high-quality, lavish watches and jewellery as an export. The cabinotiers grew in number, and in 1755, forged the beginnings of one of Switzerland’s oldest watchmakers, Vacheron Constantin. Founded off the back of these immensely talented artisans, Vacheron Constantin has built an illustrious history making some of the finest and most complicated watches known to man: including the most complicated watch in the world, this Tour de l’Ile Grand Complication.
Review
Tour de l’Ile actually translates to “Tower On The Island”, and is a tall building located on an island in the River Rhone that splits north and south Geneva. Originally built as a castle in 1219 to defend the city, it became home to the Geneva police department before Vacheron Constantin moved in. Being tall with a well-lit attic space, it was a dream environment for Les Cabinotiers.
The Vacheron Constantin Tour de l’Ile Grand Complication celebrates 250 years since those first moments in a fashion absolutely befitting two-and-a-half centuries of excellence. Only seven examples of this watch exist, with one remaining in the Vacheron Constantin heritage collection—this one.
Its case, in rose gold, is 47mm across, 18mm wide and houses sixteen complications, four more than the renowned Patek Philippe Sky Moon Tourbillon. The calibre 2750 that powers those sixteen complications for 58 hours on a full wind contains 834 parts. That’s 129 more parts than the Sky Moon Tourbillon and a whopping 278 more than an A. Lange & Sohne Triple Split. There are eleven hands, five pushers, two sliders and a crown. It took three-and-a-half years to make.
So, what are those sixteen complications? Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. On the front it has the time, of course, including a sixty-second tourbillon, a large moonphase in anodised gold, a power reserve, a minute repeater power reserve and a second time zone with day/night display.
But that’s far from all, as those who can count to sixteen will have noticed. Turn the watch over and there’s even more dial to fit in the displays for this incredible feat of watchmaking. Here, there’s days of the week, months, leap year, date, equation of time which balances mean and real time, sunrise and sunset based on the city of Geneva and an anodised gold celestial display of the northern hemisphere including sidereal time. Last of all, there’s a minute repeater, wound via the bezel by the two sliders, making the case narrower than it would have been if it had a traditional side-mounted slider.
And not only is this watch more complicated than Eminem’s relationship with his mother, it’s also crafted to utter, incredible perfection. You can tell because, not only does it look amazing, it’s also been awarded the Geneva Seal, emblazoned proudly on the dial. And that’s no ordinary seal. It was hand engraved from gold.
The watch is awash with mind-blowing details like that. The moonphase, again in gold, takes a week to hand engrave. And there are two of them, so two weeks. The silvered yellow gold dial is hand guilloched with three individual patterns. And if you look really close, you just might see that the 45-minute marker has been replaced with “250” in celebration of the anniversary. And if you look really, really close, you might even see the hidden signature at twelve, the dates 1755 when the company was founded and 2005 when the watch was built.
Put it altogether and you have the world’s most expensive and elaborate hockey puck. Yes, it’s big, but considering how jam-packed it is with complication, I’m surprised it’s not bursting at the seams. Actually, looking at the side profile, it kind of is. It’s a not only a masterful piece of watchmaking ingenuity, it’s also the perfect nod to 250 years since those first Cabinotiers took to their tools in the Geneven lofts way back when. If only they could see what their work went on to become.
As of the launch of this watch in 2005, it was the most complicated ever made. But that wasn’t enough for Vacheron Constantin, because for its 260th anniversary, it revisited the theme to again make the most complicated watch in the world. This time it’s a pocket watch, and somehow it squeezes in an utterly insane 57 complications. Who knows what they’ll do for 270…
