Dear MMDs,  Patek Philippe, the well-known watch maker, opened last
year a magnificent watch museum in Geneva, with hundreds of watches
from the XVIth century to nowadays.

In this museum, the focus is on enameled watches, and -- that is for us
-- decorative watches with complicated mechanisms, featuring music or
automatas.  So there are many musical watches, an extraordinary pistol
with miniature singing bird, a singing bird bush, many singing bird or
musical tabatieres, etc.

It is, alas, not possible to listen to the real things, but several
well-made videos give a good idea of what they are and how they are
made.  The management considers improving the explanation panels and
multiplying the videos, etc.

The 1st floor is devoted to watch machinery (with a real clockmaker
working at his bench), the second one to the history of Patek Philippe
watches, from mid-XIXth century to today (with many "complications"
watches, including the most complicated watch of the world, the
"Calibre 89"), and the third floor is devoted to antique watches.

A "must" if you stay in Geneva!  And it is really different from
the other large and clock museum, the public and beautiful "Musee de
l'Horlogerie et de l'Emaillerie".

You will find all particulars about this museum on my web pages,
musica mecanica, at Swiss museums (17 museums with mechanical music
items mentioned).  Visit http://www.musicamecanica.org/

But for those who are in a hurry, they may look directly at the Patek
Philippe Museum web pages at : http://www.patekmuseum.com/  Be careful!
The museum is closed on Sunday and Monday.  Opened only in the
afternoon (2 to 5) on workdays, and from 10 AM to 5 PM on Saturday.

Best regards,

Philippe Rouille  (Paris, France)
http://www.musicamecanica.org/