“The underwater world is still to be discovered. Anything that is done to improve our knowledge of it speeds up its conquest,” said Luigi Ferraro, a wartime commander in the Italian navy’s formidable demolition, sabotage, and underwater warfare unit. The former frogman was a beacon in the murky world of combat diving and had a prolific postwar career creating equipment for everyone from Jacques Cousteau to James Bond in Thunderball. Yet, throughout his courageous, subaqueous life, the military hero relied most deeply on one piece of kit: his trusty Panerai wristwatch.
Fifty years after Panerai’s beginnings on Florence’s Ponte alle Grazie in 1860, the watchmaker was tapped by the Italian military to create special luminescent watches for its underwater operatives. The Panerai family had long supplied the navy with precision instruments — including gun sights — and during WW1, they patented “Radiomir,” a radium-based substance that ensured dial legibility even at great depths.
After WW2, in 1949, Panerai filed another patent for another paint: “Luminor.” This innovation became the brand’s new watchword, capping off a successful decade that also entrenched Panerai’s enduring cushion-shaped, steel-cased aesthetic. By now, the watches were outperforming even the strict requirements of the Italian navy, with glowing dials, extended power reserves, and the brand’s emblematic crown protection device promising enhanced water and shock resistance.
More innovations followed. In 1956, a small-seconds indicator was introduced to enhance the timepiece’s military precision, and a “sandwich” face design — two superimposed plates containing a luminous filling — dialled up their legibility even further. Bold Arabic numerals were stationed at the cardinal points, flanking clear stick indexes, and Plexiglas was installed on the watch backs, establishing Panerai as pioneers in the world of exhibition cases.
From World Wars To Watches & Wonders, Panerai’s Latest Luminor Honours Heritage
Still from “I SETTE DELL’ORSA MAGGIORE.” Photo courtesy of Panerai.
From World Wars To Watches & Wonders, Panerai’s Latest Luminor Honours Heritage
Italian navy divers in action. Photo courtesy of Panerai.
Finally, after nearly a century of accuracy and durability, Panerai made its watches available to the public for the first time in 1993. At last, it wasn’t just military men who could buckle up these groundbreaking, wave-making watches — and two of the three initial consumer models even bore the “Luminor” name, a nod to that radioactive luminescent paint of the past.
More than three decades later, the 2025 Luminor Marina debuted at Watches & Wonders earlier this year in both titanium and steel. Honouring Panerai’s historical roots, it offers water resistance up to 500 metres, streamlined lugs to accommodate the brand’s PAM Click Release System, and — most notably — enhanced, ultra-bright Grade X2 Super-LumiNova on its dial. It’s the first core-collection Panerai to receive the upgrade: 40 percent more vivid than previous lumes, completely radium-free, and a luminous leap forward in that underwater “conquest” Ferraro spearheaded so many years ago.
