We’ve looked at the best tourbillon watches of 2024, the best independent watchmakers in the world, and even the best watches of the year. Now we turn our attention to the very best central tourbillon watches in the world.

A tourbillon is an escapement in a rotating cage, invented hundreds of years ago by Breguet to counteract the effects of gravity. Since then, the problems of gravity in watches have been mitigated in other ways, but the challenge of creating a tourbillon and the beauty of the sight continue to fascinate manufacturers and collectors alike. Placing the tourbillon mechanism in the center of the movement, and hence the dial, is particularly challenging and requires unique technical and design innovations.

The central tenet of the central tourbillon is that there can be no central hands. The pivots in the center of the dial are occupied by the tourbillon escapement. So, although the seconds can often be read from the tourbillon cage, a one-minute tourbillon requires a creative solution to the problem of where to place the hour and minute hands. In most central tourbillons, the hands are mounted on discs that rotate around the cage, with rails under the tourbillon cage or along the edge of the dial. Another solution is to use the combination of jumping hour and retrograde minute scale, a potentially more legible solution, as the hands on rotating discs are often in the shape of short arrowheads, which are sometimes difficult to read. This is how one learns to appreciate the effectiveness of long central hour and minute hands on traditional dials, something we usually take for granted.

The central tourbillon is something of a trend at the moment – as a jury member of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie Geneve, I noticed at least seven entries with a central tourbillon in the first round of judging this year. In my view, the complication is cleaner and more elegant than the double, triple, spherical and gem-set variants we’ve seen over the past 20 years, and the large escapements suggest greater reliability and interesting looks, as they are invariably covered with domed crystals.

Here are 10 tantalizing examples of the Central T.