Surprisingly, it took a German watch brand to pay tribute to the rebirth of Notre-Dame de Paris… MeisterSinger, founded in 2001 by Manfred Brassler in Munster, specializes in mono-hand models, displaying the time via a single hand as it did before the appearance of the second hand at the dawn of the 18th century.

Just a few weeks before the resurrection of Notre-Dame, the brand is offering a limited edition of just 70 pieces, priced at €4,599. This 43 mm-diameter steel creation was recently unveiled at the We Love Watches trade show in Paris, and is on sale at Ocarat.com or at the Ochrono boutique in Paris. Its incredible dial is an identical reproduction of one of the cathedral’s rose windows. A real challenge on the scale of a watch, it involved delicately milling the center, with a dark blue background to bring out the Gothic lacework.

But the tribute to Notre-Dame-de-Paris doesn’t stop there: its automatic movement on a Sellita SW200 base, with 38 hours of power reserve, also incorporates a striking module developed by MeisterSinger. Accumulating energy for 60 minutes, the sonorous fork behind the dial marks each new hour with what is known in watchmaking terms as a “sonnerie au passage”. This function can be deactivated if discretion is required, for example during mass, using the push-button above the crown. But how do you tell the time on such a watch? It’s quite simple: the ivory-colored circumference of the dial is divided into 144 5-minute segments, towards which the red-tipped hand points. Or how to be on time to within five minutes… The reverse side of the case features an engraving of the rosette on the transparent glass back, together with the piece’s serial number.