Musée de l'horlogerie de Saint-Nicolas d'Aliermont, Clock museum in Saint-Nicolas-d'Aliermont, France

The Musée de l'horlogerie is a clock museum in this town housing a collection of timepieces and mechanical instruments from local production. The displays show devices from different periods alongside original tools that craftspeople used to make and repair watches.

Clockmaking in Saint-Nicolas-d'Aliermont began with the arrival of clockmaker Charles-Antoine Croutte at Le Bout d'Aval in 1725, who brought the Saint-Nicolas floor clock with its flat brass mechanism. In 1807 the state commissioned Honoré Pons to settle here and make mantel clocks with round movements. Local firms such as Couaillet Frères, founded in 1903, and Réveils Bayard, named in 1907, later produced travel clocks and alarm clocks in large numbers.

The Saint-Nicolas clock, a floor clock brought to the village by clockmaker Charles-Antoine Croutte in 1725, gives the museum its emblem. Its flat brass mechanism, short pendulum and narrow case topped with a carved head set it apart from the iron-caged Comtoise clocks. Cabinetmaker Spiridion Cartier signed many of them; floral baskets, doves and wheat decorate dial and body.

Plan your visit with enough time to carefully examine the tools and devices on display. School groups can arrange guided tours designed specifically for younger visitors.

Among the 400 objects is a travel clock made by hand by Armand Couaillet of Saint-Nicolas, with nearly 500 parts, an ivory dial, passing and quarter-hour striking, an hour-on-demand function and an alarm. The museum also holds a Bayard Mickey Mouse alarm clock, sold after the firm's 1930 collaboration with Walt Disney.