Bulgari Bulgari watches

The Bulgari Bulgari takes its name from the double logo engraved around its bezel. Gérald Genta designed it in 1975, and the first series, the Bulgari Roma, was a quartz watch with a grey liquid-crystal digital display, made in 100 pieces for top clients. The engraved bezel draws on the coins of ancient Rome, where engraved inscriptions surrounded the emperor's effigy.

Requests for repeats of the Roma led Bulgari to create the Bulgari Bulgari line in 1977, the watch that took the house into watchmaking. The brand name moved onto the dial from 1980. From 1996 the line became mainly mechanical and took on small complications, then a perpetual calendar in 2001, a tourbillon in 2004 and 2005 and a minute repeater in 2005. The case was restyled in 2006 and again in 2013.

The Solotempo is the plain three-hand watch: the case with the engraved bezel at 39 mm and 9.91 mm thick, or 41.5 mm and 9.86 mm thick, in steel, pink gold, or steel and pink gold, some on a bracelet. A sapphire-blue dial was announced for the Bulgari Bulgari in 2015, in a watch powered by Bulgari's in-house self-winding Solotempo BVL 191 with a 42-hour power reserve.

The Velocissimo is the sportier member: a 41.5 mm case, thicker at 12.73 mm, with a tachymeter scale on the bezel and a black dial, in steel, pink gold or a two-tone mix. The Solotempo Fragment stands apart, a 41 mm steel watch just 8.7 mm thick with a black dial, limited to 250 pieces.