Then comes the addition of the central tourbillon, which of course doubles as the running seconds indicator. The movement inside of the Bulgari Papillon (“butterfly” in French) Tourbillon Central has a power reserve indicator on it, which is visible through the rear of the watch. Again, I truly appreciate the inclusion of power reserve indicators on manually wound watches, and agree that placing them on the movement is in many instances the best option.
An Omega De Ville Central Tourbillon
Haldimann H8
You may not have thought about it, but when was the last time you saw a tourbillon-based watch where the tourbillon was in the center of the dial? There are other examples of this complication out there, but it is rare. You have avant-garde brands like Haldimann that have watches that literally forego the time altogether and just have a tourbillon in the center, but you also have Omega, that actually still produces central tourbillon watches today in very limited numbers. In fact, Omega was so fascinated by the notion of a centrally-mounted tourbillon that they made it the cornerstone of their entire ultra-luxury segment of watches.
Central tourbillons are hard to find because of the simply reality that it makes gearing and wheel design a lot more challenging. Clearly, one cannot easily have centrally mounted hands for the hours and minutes if there is a tourbillon in the way. Of course, in the Bulgari Papillon Tourbillon Central the solution to this problem is the Papillon-style minute indicator and the jumping hour indicator.
Visually, it is difficult to deny the aesthetic appeal of a centrally mounted tourbillon. Given that your eyes are typically immediately attracted to the center of a watch, you instantly get the sensual pleasure of viewing the tourbillon spinning in action. Despite the fact that the luxury value of tourbillons is getting a bit played out, the core visceral sensation of watching them in action is no less real now than it was when the regulation-style complication was actually a lot more exclusive.
Inside the Bulgari Papillon Tourbillon Central is their in-house made caliber BVL 266 manually wound movement. The mechanism operates at 3Hz (21,600bph) with a decent power reserve of 60 hours. According to Bulgari, the particular system that indicates the time in the Bulgari Papillon Touribllon Central doesn’t take that much energy. It’s a nicely made movement which is perhaps marred by its overly modern decoration on the rear of the case.
It looks cool, but the mostly machine-cut decoration and dark gray finishing limit the feeling of it being something produced by someone’s hands. Further, there is a very limited amount of discernible hand-finishing, even though I know their factory is more than capable of it.
On paper, the “Daniel Roth” Papillon case, which is like a mixture between a round and tonneau case, should not be comfortable especially given its unorthodox and 11.9mm-thick case design and 45mm-wide size. Yet, these figures can be deceiving, as on the wrist the Bulgari Papillon Central Tourbillon is surprisingly comfortable and really quite attractive. If anything, the reason such a novel case design is still around, even though it struggles to find a good place in the Bulgari portfolio (finding mere mention of this watch – or any Papillon model – on the brand’s website is a huge pain), is because of just how comfortable it is, and how unique yet elegant is appears on the wrist.
Bulgari produces two limited-edition versions of the Bulgari Papillon Central Tourbillon. The less limited version was produced as a set of 30 pieces in 18k pink gold. This is the 950 platinum version, which was produced as a limited edition of just 10 pieces. Price is $129,000 in pink gold and $139,000 in platinum. bulgari.com
