Bring This Watch Back: Corum Romulus

Considering the number of unique, world-famous pieces it has produced, Corum is relatively youthful as far as Swiss watch brands go, founded in 1955 in La Chaux-de-Fonds by René Bannwart and his uncle, Gaston Ries, who had been running his own watchmaking workshop since 1924. The name “Corum” is a simplified spelling of the Latin “quorum,” which refers to small groups of decision makers able to launch bold ideas — a concept that greatly appealed to the founders. And “bold” the Corum watches indisputably were, almost from the beginning. In 1958 came the “Chinese Hat” watch, with its oddly shaped bezel echoing the silhouette of the pyramid hats worn in China. Corum quickly followed it with the first Admiral’s Cup model (a watch worthy of its own article someday) in 1960 and the Double Eagle Coin watch in 1964, which repurposed an actual $20 coin as its dial and became a favorite of U.S. presidents. In the ensuing decades came even more milestones, like the first Golden Bridge in 1980 and the once-trendy Bubble watches in 2000, and new generations of the Admirals Cup watches for contemporary audiences. Many of these timepieces are still out there in some shape or form today — Corum even revived the Bubble in 2015 — but the one we’re focusing on today is a model that first appeared in 1966, made a big-time return in the mid-aughts, but is now mostly absent from the lineup, except for the rare Heritage edition: the Corum Romulus.

The intrigue of the Corum Romulus begins with its origin story, which to many will seem impossible to believe but is part of the brand’s official history. The first Romulus, named and designed to pay tribute to ancient Roman culture, was set to make its debut at the 1966 Basel watch fair, once the industry’s biggest annual showcase — and it was supposed to have Roman numerals on its dial. However, so the story goes, whoever was contracted to make the dials for the first batch of models — wait for it — forgot to include the hour markers, sending only plain dials with a set of central hands. (A somewhat more plausible version of the story has it that the delivery of the hour markers was delayed, necessitating some sort of solution to make the production deadline.) Bannwart, who must have been enraged initially, apparently liked the clean look of the dials sans markers, and was still determined to have the Romulus ready to promote at the Basel fair, so he asked his team to engrave the Roman numerals on the bezels instead. This clever, last-minute design improvisation paid off, as the watch became one of Corum’s hits of that fruitful era. 

It was also a landmark of watch design. Though even Corum itself has not claimed that the Romulus was the “first ever” wristwatch with Roman numerals engraved on the bezel rather than the dial, it was definitely one of the first. It preceded, by more than a decade, a much better known watch with a similar aesthetic: the Bulgari Bulgari, launched in 1977 and designed by the legendary Gérald Genta. The engravings in that watch’s bezel, however, were not to mark the hours but to depict the watch’s name in a Roman-style font (‘BVLGARI BVLGARI”). And it wasn’t until 1995 that today’s standard-bearer of the engraved-hour-bezel look, the Omega Constellation, adopted its now-familiar design, which still isn’t exactly like that of the Romulus because it places hour markers on the dial to supplement the engraved Roman numerals on the bezel. Like many watches released on the cusp of the Quartz Crisis that reared up in the 1970s and lingered into the ‘90s, the Romulus faded from the scene several years after its debut (though Corum did make some versions of the Romulus with quartz movements). 

Photo: Bonhams

In January 2000, watch-industry legend Severin Wunderman, the mastermind behind the first Gucci watches, acquired Corum from the founding family and among his initiatives for the new millennium was the revival of the Romulus, doubling down on its distinctive Roman theme and expanding the scope to include not just three-handed dress watches but also complications, like a Chronograph, a Dual Time (above), and even a Perpetual Calendar (below). The 21st-century version of the Romulus — this was the version that first caught the eye of your humble scribe — retained a lot of the elements of the ‘60s original but was most definitely a product of the 2000s. The cases were larger, as per the “bigger is better" ethos of the era, and the execution of the case and bezel were more sophisticated, with a double-curving case silhouette and domed sapphire crystal that enhanced the elliptical effect of the engraved bezel, which now boasted a finely polished longitudinal groove along its edge. The sapphire exhibition caseback was etched with a motif evoking the leaf crowns worn by Roman emperors.

Perhaps my fond memories of the Corum Romulus also have something to do with the absolutely epic manner in which it was launched — at a Roman bacchanalia-themed party at — where else? — Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, complete with centurions, harem girls, and a toga-clad emperor on a golden throne. It was during the JCK and Couture watch and jewelry fairs in Sin City in 2007, and it remains one of my most vivid memories of my early days in this crazy business. Of course, it helped that I actually did really like the watch, and am a fan of Corum in general. I avidly followed new additions to the Romulus collection in the next few years, but the model apparently never found a substantial enough audience. When ownership of Corum changed hands from the Wunderman family (Severin and his son Michael, who took over after the former’s death in 2008) to the China Haidan Group in 2013, the Romulus didn’t make the cut in the subsequent streamlining of the brand’s portfolio — which is, unsurprisingly, heavy these days on the Admiral and Bridge series, descendants of the brand's most successful models, the Admiral’s Cup and Golden Bridge.

As I alluded to above, the Romulus still appears in very limited fashion as a Heritage model, like the very audacious Romulus Billionaire Tourbillon (above; note the clever use of diamonds for the bezel's Roman numerals), only eight of which were made. Nonetheless, I am sure I am not the only watch aficionado who misses the collection's presence on the market. Perhaps the bolder, mid-2000s revamp would be a hard sell nowadays, but the smaller, quirkier 1966 version just might find some fans in this era of seemingly unlimited reissues of '60s and '70s classics, even those mostly forgotten. What do you say, Corum (and readers)? Imagine you're in an ancient Roman arena, deciding the fate of a gladiator vanquished in valiant combat: thumbs up or down?

Bring This Watch Back is a series where we take a look at watches that deserve a second chance after being discontinued for one reason or another. Maybe they were ahead of their times or they fell out of favor due to outside factors. Here we make the case for our favorites, forgotten no longer.