San Marco

The San Marco line was born in 1989 with the San Marco Minute Repeater, a chiming watch directly inspired by the Clock Tower in St Mark's Square in Venice, on top of which two bronze statues — the so-called "Moors" — strike the hours on a large bell. Ulysse Nardin transferred this mechanical spectacle to wristwatch scale, introducing small automaton figures, the jacquemarts, which come to life when the watch chimes.

In 1993 the line was joined by the first Hourstriker San Marco, a version that also marked a milestone in the manufacture's production history: it was among the first Ulysse Nardin watches to use a dial made by Donze Cadrans, a workshop specialising in fine dials that the brand would acquire outright in 2012, integrating its expertise into its own manufacturing chain.

The line's most recent versions, such as reference 6106-103 in 42 mm rose gold, keep the same theatrical principle — an onyx dial with a jacquemart figure that moves as the hours or half-hours chime, which can also be activated manually — relying on more modern in-house calibres such as the UN-75, which runs at 28,000 vibrations per hour with two separate mainspring barrels. The San Marco line remains one of the most representative chapters of Ulysse Nardin's expertise in chiming complications and mechanical automata.