Panerai Radiomir watches

The Panerai Radiomir is the brand's original Italian Navy watch, and it takes its name from Radiomir, the radium-based luminous compound Panerai patented to make dials readable in the dark. Its stablemate, the Luminor, is named after the tritium-based compound that replaced radium around 1965.

The first Radiomir is traditionally dated to 1936, although the evidence is a single presentation piece, ref. 2533, which Panerai still holds; that prototype had a Perspex crystal. The watch went into service with the Royal Italian Navy in 1938, and Rolex was Panerai's supplier from 1936 to 1956. The early case had wire lugs, a length of steel wire bent and welded to the caseband; around 1940 a new case brought heavier lugs milled from the same block of steel. In 1997, the year Richemont bought Panerai, the brand marked its relaunch with the Radiomir PAM00021, a 47 mm platinum watch.

Modern Radiomirs are mostly 45 or 47 mm, usually with black or brown dials, and several 3 Days models in steel, gold and platinum keep an acrylic (Plexi) crystal, as the 1936 prototype had. The 47 mm steel 10 Days GMT was made as a run of boutique editions named after cities, from Moscow and Macau to Manama and Las Vegas, most limited to 10 pieces; the 46 mm white gold, pink gold and platinum versions came in runs of 50 to 250. The Black Seal is the 44 and 45 mm steel or ceramic model, and the Composite models use ceramic or aluminium cases.

Smaller and more complicated pieces sit at the edges: 40 mm white and pink gold Radiomirs, some set with diamonds, 42 mm models in steel, titanium, gold and platinum, split-seconds chronographs, a GMT-Alarm, the 48 mm Tourbillon GMT, and the 60 mm titanium Radiomir Egiziano (PAM00341) with a rotating bezel, which shares its name with the Egiziano Panerai produced for the Egyptian Navy in 1956.