Patek Philippe Unveils New Calatrava With 24-Hour Display Travel Time

The Calatrava has been a key offering from Patek Philippe ever since it was launched in 1932. With its sleek round case and air of understatement, the model is the epitome of timeless elegance. Over the years, Patek Philippe has added to this vast family a variety of complications. For 2023, the Calatrava gets new enhancements, which makes it the perfect timepiece for travellers.

Unveiled at Watches & Wonders, the new Calatrava Reference 5224R-001 features the Travel Time dual time zone and an original 24-hour display. The new caliber 31-260 PS FUS 24H self-winding movement is further distinguished by its patented system for correcting local time by the crown.

Patek Philippe has already used its Travel Time system with its second time zone to great effect in several models. With two centre hour hands, once which can be adjusted backwards or forwards in one-hour steps, it has struck a chord with users owing to its ease of operation and excellent legibility.

Now with a new 24-hour display, which displays the local time and home time by two centre hands via a 24-hour circle, it further enhances the appeal of the Calatrava. To realise this original display, the designers have reinterpreted the indication seen in previous vintage timepieces with a resolutely modern spirit. Noon is placed at 12 o’clock rather than at 6 o’clock, effectively ensuring excellent legibility throughout the daytime hours.

In order to provide these impeccable functions, Patek Philippe’s engineers took the 31-260 ultra-thin self-winding base caliber and added a 24-hour mechanism and a Travel Time mechanism. The Reference 5224R-001 now offers optimised efficiency, rate accuracy, durability, safety and ease of use.

Crowning Glory

Visible through a transparent sapphire-crystal back, the new self-winding caliber 31-260 PS FUS 24H movement with mini-rotor in platinum makes it possible to provide a case whose elegant finesse (9.85 m high) is perfectly suited to the Calatrava. In preserving the sleek lines, Patek Philippe also replaced the traditional correction pushers for local time on the left-hand flank of the Calatrava case with a patented correction system using the crown pulled out to the intermediate position.

All of this is encased in the fully polished rose-gold case, 42 mm in diameter, inspired by that of the Calatrava Weekly Calendar Reference launched in 2019. It is further distinguished by its curved two-tier lugs. In terms of design, the navy-blue dial shines by its elegance and legibility, enhanced by a double railway-track scale for the hours and minutes.

The 24-hour display, with its alternating Arabic numerals and hour markers and its cabochon 5-minute markers, represents a total of 44 rose-gold appliques – polished together to obtain the same brilliance and applied individually by hand. The Travel Time dual time zone is displayed by three syringe-shaped hands in rose gold, with a luminescent coating for the local hour hand and the minute hand and a pierced centre for the home hour hand.

Refined finishing touches create beautiful plays of light on the dial: a circular striated centre, a circular satin-finished hour circle and a snailed small-seconds counter with a rose-gilt outline. Completing the look is a navy-blue calfskin strap with a nubuck finish and secured by a prong buckle in rose gold. It also features a contrasting cream stitching echoing the colour of the dial.

PATEK PHILIPPE CALATRAVA REFERENCE 5224R-001 SPECS

Case 18K rose gold, sapphire-crystal case back with 30m water resistance
Movement Caliber 31-260 PS FUS 24H Self-winding mechanical movement, 48 hour power reserve

(Images: Patek Philippe)