The spectacular indication is back in business.
One of the most interesting exhibits on display at the Royal Palace Museum in Genoa is the so-called night clock which Pope Alexander VII (1655-67) commissioned Pietro Tomasso Campani to create.
The pope, who suffered from insomnia and couldn't stand the sound of ticking, asked Campani to make a silent clock, capable of telling the time in the dark. The Brothers Campani created a perforated dial, which could be illuminated from behind by the light of a small oil lamp or candle.
When an Audemars Piguet watchmaker laid eyes on this timepiece in 1989, the original backlighting wasn't the attention-grabber, it was the wandering hours system: time was read on a semi-circle in an aperture that indicated the quarter hours.
The idea was implemented two years later in the Star Wheel Ref. 25720: a watch with three hour disks that take turns in pointing to an arched minute-scale sector above.
Wandering hours were also later implemented in creations by the brand Urwerk, whose co-founder Felix Baumgartner had learned about watchmaking from pieces in the atelier where his father restored antique watches.
Audemars Piguet decided to return Starwheel to the Code 11.59 collection in 2022 (the last Starwheel model was released in 2003). The idea remains the same but the watch has a more modern look.
The transparent disks and guilloché salmon dial have been replaced by disks made of black PVD-coated aluminum on a blue aventurine backdrop, which traditionally serves as a starry sky.
The case is no longer made of rose gold, now in black ceramic. Its ceramic case middle is sandwiched between a bezel and caseback made of white gold. The case measures 41 mm in diameter and 10.7 mm in height.
Another change has been the arrival of a central seconds hand. Last but not least, the classic leather strap has been replaced by a trendier alternative: a textured black rubber-coated strap.
The transparent caseback opens up Caliber 4310 — the first reworked version of the base movement used for models from the Code 11.59 series without any extra functions. They've added a wandering hour module without impacting the power reserve — it's still 70 hours.