Girard-Perregaux Presents The Laureato Three Gold Bridges Tourbillon, A New Take On An Enduring Classic
One of watchmaking’s most distinctive tourbillons gets a refreshed design for the new Laureato case.
Girard-Perregaux has a history of making tourbillons going all the way back to the 1860s, when Constant Girard developed the distinctive design still in use by GP today. The configuration Constant Girard created, involved the use of three bridges with identical geometry – at first, the bridges were straight bars with angled tips but the shape quickly evolved into the classic three bridges configuration still in use by Girard-Perregaux today, in which the bridge is cylindrical, with enlarged arrowhead tips. (The three bridges layout was used for non-tourbillon watches as well) The design is beautifully symmetrical – in its original form, the tourbillon carriage, movement center wheel, and mainspring barrel are each under their own bridge, and the design is visually harmonious and pleasingly logical.
GP has adapted the three bridges to wristwatches on many occasions; the La Esmerelda wristwatch, for instance, is based on perhaps the most famous of Girard-Perregaux’s three bridges tourbillons. The La Esmerelda pocket watch, no. 168230, won a gold medal at the Paris Exposition in 1889, and three bridges tourbillons from Girard-Perregaux performed with exceptional precision at the observatory time trials as well, often showing a mean daily variation in rate of less than one second per day. Girard-Perregaux’s tourbillons also had distinctively shaped carriages, with a lyre-like configuration in which the mass of the carriage was extremely low – as with the three bridges themselves, the carriages were both highly practical and very beautiful.
The first use of the golden bridge design in a Laureato wristwatch was in 1997, and since then there have been several versions, but the newest Laureato Three Gold Bridges tourbillon wristwatch uses a new bridge design, which has been created to better integrate the basic design concept into the new Laureato.
The connection between the original three bridges tourbillon design, as seen in the Esmerelda, and the new Laureato Three Gold Bridges design is obvious but there have clearly been modifications as well. The tourbillon bridges now flare outwards from the jeweled pivots at the center of each bridge, and widen significantly before narrowing again to the distinctive arrowhead tips characteristic of the three bridges designs. The same basic layout of the going train wheels is present as well, with the mainspring barrel under its own bridge at 12:00, and the tourbillon under its own bridge at 6:00. From the back you can see some interesting differences, however – the upper bridge has two additional jewels which are there to accomodate two of the wheels of the automatic winding system. Unlike GP’s three bridges pocket tourbillons, this is an automatic, with a platinum micro-rotor on the axis of the mainspring barrel (more easily seen from the front than the back). This is a configuration that goes all the way back to the first Laureato tourbillon, from 1997.
A circular bridge at the center of the movement holds an additional jewel for the automatic winding train. The movement center wheel still occupies the center of the movement, although the third wheel, which drives the tourbillon carriage around the fixed fourth wheel, is offset from the centerline. The keyless works are visible from behind but not from the front, where they’re hidden under the right side of the central gold bridge.
The basic configuration’s not a new one for Girard-Perregaux, but it retains the advantages it’s offered since it was first introduced at the turn of the century, two of the most significant of which are symmetry and transparency.
The tourbillon carriage is as beautiful as it has been since the late 19th century, and it offers ample scope for the exercise of hand finishing; it’s the location of a significant number of the total of 362 inward angles present in the movement as a whole. As is the usual practice in watchmaking today, the basic shapes of the components are produced with CNC machining and wire erosion, with the final decorative finish being applied by hand. The movement finishing on the tourbillon carriage and tourbillon components is exhaustive; even the escape wheel has been beveled and mirror polished. The escapement uses a side-lever design, in which the pallet fork and pallet jewels are on a single line on the radius of the carriage center axis, and the balance, which is brought to time with inertial weights, is freesprung, and mated with an overcoil balance spring.
One interesting update from the classic pocket tourbillons, is that the latter were fitted with regulators (that is, they were not freesprung) which could be used by a watchmaker to make fine adjustments to rate differences in different positions as well as regulate the watch; modern practice for precision timekeeping is to omit the regulator, which can offer better long term rate stability. If you look closely, you can see the regulator index on the tourbillon carriage of La Esmerelda; in the Laureato Golden Bridges, that place on the carriage is taken by a small projection which acts as a seconds hand.
The process of finalizing finishing involves the traditional method of polishing bevels, and inner and outer angles, with gentian pithwood and depending on the component, inner angles may require completion with gravers and files, especially if the inner angles are especially acute.
This is the year that Girard-Perregaux celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the Laureato (which we went hands-on with recently) and the case and bracelet featured some subtle but significant updates, as well as a case size (39mm in diameter) which in combination with the redesign, made the 50th Anniversary automatic feel very closely connected to the original Laureato from 1975. The Laureato Three Gold Bridges is slightly larger, but not by much – at 41.00mm x 10.85mm, it’s close enough to the 5oth Anniversary Automatic to have the same good fit in proportions to the design.
GP clearly went to some trouble to integrate the bridges with the case and overall design of the watch – you might not notice it at first, but just one instance of this is the shape of the bridges, which have eight facets, echoing the octagonal bezel.
One of many thoughtful details is this plate, which is attached to the flank of one of the openings in the mainplate. The plate is a signature – it carries the initials of the watchmaker who assembled the watch, which I think is a wonderful gesture, since for hundreds of years so many talented artisans have worked in more or less total anonymity.
Of all the Laureato three bridges tourbillons, I think this is the most successful so far. The three bridges design is a tough one to make fit well with the Laureato but the redesign of the bridges in combination with the 2025 tweaks to the Laureato case and bracelet, make for a watch in which all the details add up to more than the sum of their parts; even the use of white gold for the bezel and bridges adds a subtle warmth (thanks to the yellow gold present in the white gold alloy) which would be absent if steel had been used (or for that matter, platinum, though I bet this watch in platinum would be a magnificently if subtly opulent piece of work). Every Laureato tourbillon under three bridges has been interesting, but the new Laureato Tourbillon Three Gold Bridges builds a bridge between the classical and the modern as well.
The Girard-Perregaux Laureato Three Gold Bridges Tourbillon, ref. 99112-58-3576-1CM: case, stainless steel with white gold bezel, 41.00mm x 10.85mm, with sapphire crystals front and back; 30M water resistance. Baton white gold hands with blue-emission lume and luminous white gold indexes (blue emission as well). Movement, Girard-Perregaux caliber GP09620-2206, automatic with platinum micro-rotor and three white gold bridges; 32.00mm x 6.90mm, running at 21,600 vph in 33 jewels; small seconds on the tourbillon; Constant Girard style tourbillon cage. Also available with a diamond set bezel. Limited edition of 50 pieces worldwide in steel; non-limited with a diamond set bezel; price, CHF 162,000, or CHF 219,000 with diamonds. For more info and availability, visit Girard-Perregaux.com.