Piaget was founded in 1874 by Georges-Édouard Piaget, who at the age of 19 set up a workshop on the family farm in La Côte-aux-Fées, a village in the Swiss Jura, to make precision movements and components. The family business moved from movement making to finished watches when Piaget became a registered trademark in 1943, and two years later a larger manufacture opened in La Côte-aux-Fées under the third generation, Gérald and Valentin Piaget, who took the brand international. Piaget is now part of the Richemont group, which lists it among its specialist watchmakers, and it is also active in high jewellery.
Piaget is known above all for ultra-thin watchmaking. Its hand-wound 9P calibre of 1957, followed in 1960 by a micro-rotor automatic movement, laid the foundations of the Altiplano collection. The Altiplano Ultimate Concept, a mechanical watch about 2 mm thick including case and crystal, won the Aiguille d’Or at the 2020 GPHG, and for the brand’s 150th anniversary in 2024 Piaget released the Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon at the same thickness. The Polo 79, based on the original Piaget Polo of 1979, won the Iconic Watch Prize at the 2024 GPHG. Other collections include Limelight Gala and Possession, along with jewellery watches.
