Inside Immersion, An Exhibition Honouring The Centenary Of Panerai's Oldest Boutique

Walk across Piazza San Giovanni in Florence and stand facing the Baptistery. Look directly opposite, and if you spot the word OROLOGERIA spelled out in gold letters above a wooden shopfront, you've found the oldest Panerai boutique still standing anywhere in the world. You could literally walk past the building, thinking that it's a fancy Panerai storefront, without realizing what you missed. This year, the boutique turns hundred, and Panerai has plans to make sure you notice.

From September 10 to 19, the Italian watchmaker is running a contemporary exhibition at Museo Marino Marini in Florence, titled Immersion, along with several other special events like up at the Piazza San Giovanni through the year.

The Story Of Panerai's Oldest Boutique

The Piazza San Giovanni boutique wasn't Panerai's first stop, though. That honor belongs to Ponte alle Grazie, where Giovanni Panerai opened the brand's original family watch shop in 1860: a combined store, workshop, and Florence's first watchmaking school, all under one roof.

The address, however, didn't survive long. The Ponte alle Grazie was destroyed during Florence's years as capital of the Kingdom of Italy, between 1865 and 1871, and the shop found itself bouncing between several locations for decades till it finally settled into Piazza San Giovanni in 1926.

Under the name Orologeria Svizzera, this address became more than a retail counter for Panerai. It doubled as a working repair shop, with horologists assembling and fixing watches on-site, and it put Giuseppe Panerai in regular contact with the biggest watchmaking names and Maisons of the era. That access is where he picked up the foundational expertise that eventually helped him turn Panerai into a name of its own.

Meanwhile, away from the shop floor, the family was building a different kind of relationship: one with the Italian Navy that would come to define Panerai around water resistance and luminescence. Military secrecy kept that side of the business under wraps until September 10, 1993, when Panerai finally revealed these creations to civilians. That same year, the Piazza San Giovanni boutique started stocking Panerai watches for the first time.

Richemont bought the brand in 1997, and the boutique got a full renovation not long after, reopening in 2001 as the Maison's first company-owned store. Its old-world character has stuck around since: the Luminor, Submersible, and Radiomir lines sit next to historic pieces from Panerai's past, backed by a working watchmaker's station that takes the shop's origin story beyond just a fact sheet framed on a wall.

Inside Immersion

From September 10 to 19, Panerai takes over the crypt of the Museo Marino Marini, a short walk from the boutique, with an exhibition called Immersion. It's something of a homecoming: ten years after Panerai's Dive Into Time show at the same museum in 2016, the brand is back at this landmark for another pass at its history.

The exhibition starts beneath the main floor of the Museo Marino Marini. This is a vast subterranean space dating back to the 14th century. Holding the exhibition here is an attempt to give you a feeling of the conditions that shaped what Panerai's watches needed to survive: pressure, darkness, and the stillness that comes with being far underwater. Here, you follow the different generations of watches, tracking Panerai's nautical instruments and chronographs across time and circumstance.

So, if you happen to be in Florence this September, you know where to start. Find the gold OROLOGERIA lettering in Piazza San Giovanni, take a look inside, and then head towards Museo Marino Marini. The first stop tells you where Panerai came from. The second gives you a sense of where that history has taken it.