The Rocket Watch Factory Museum

The museum was founded from the very beginning of the factory, almost 300 years ago.

The history of the museum begins with an exhibition at the factory where portraits of royal people, minerals with which the factory worked, and medals and guest reviews of the factory were exhibited.

Over the years, the exhibition expanded and gradually grew into a full-fledged museum which displays exhibits from each era of the factory’s life: products of the imperial lapidary factory, Rocket and Victory collection watches of Soviet manufacture, and a complete modern collection of watches and watch mechanisms.

The main goal of the museum is to introduce guests to its legendary Russian production. Today, the museum is not limited to exposure. Visitors are given a unique chance to visit one of the rare functioning manufactories which fully produces its own watch mechanisms. A visit to the museum is a rare opportunity to plunge into the mysterious world of watchmaking and see with your own eyes the production of all parts of the mechanism (there are more than 240 of them) and the painstaking process of assembling them.

The museum’s collection unites all eras of the factory.

The museum presents:

– Products of the lapidary factory which are a real treasure because they were produced by orders of the imperial palace and were used as gifts to the ruling elite around the world. The products of the lapidary factory are held at world famous museums such as Buckingham Palace, the Louvre, the Hermitage and others;

– The awards and orders of the factory’s employees;

– More than 200 watches, which are only some of the models that the plant produced during the entire time of its operation;

– The watch mechanism in a disassembled form and all of its details, the smallest of which are measured in microns!

– The largest archive of watch designs, executed in watercolor “by hand”.

Previously, when there were no computers, all designs were drawn by the designers of the plant in watercolor by hand. When creating modern collections, designers are inspired by these sketches: they are converted into electronic form and new collections are created on their basis.