In La Chaux-de-Fonds, watchmaking is not confined to a museum display. It is written across the street grid, the orientation of buildings and the unusual proximity of homes, workshops and factories. Together with nearby Le Locle, the city was inscribed by UNESCO in 2009 as an exceptional example of urban planning created for a single living industry.
Watchmaking developed in the Swiss Jura from the seventeenth century, in a high-altitude region where agriculture was difficult and winters were severe. Production depended on many specialised workers making and assembling small components. Houses therefore combined living space with bright workrooms, while later factories remained woven into the urban fabric rather than separated in a distant industrial district.
