Calle San Rafael 45
Before the revolution, before the embargo, before Havana became a memory for millions, there was Calle San Rafael. Five blocks of boulevard running west from the Paseo del Prado through the commercial heart of the city. By the 1920s, it had become the most important retail corridor in the Caribbean.
The names on that street read like a directory of Latin American luxury.
Cuervo y Sobrinos represented Longines and built double-branded timepieces with Rolex and Patek Philippe. Gastón Bared carried Omega, Cartier, and Bretting. Joyería Riviera held exclusive import rights for the most coveted Swiss houses. Department stores like Fin de Siglo and El Encanto drew customers from across the Americas.
In 1926, a watchmaking and jewelry house secured its address at San Rafael 45 and entered that arena.
La Casa MARTULL.
After 1959
Castro’s Revolution and communism ended commercial life on San Rafael and across Havana. Every private enterprise on the boulevard was nationalized or shuttered. The jewelers, the merchants, the watchmakers. All of them.
La Casa Martull closed with the rest. The name went unused for decades.
MARTULL. Miami.
Ninety miles north of Havana, Miami became the city where much of Cuba’s commercial and cultural identity continued. Its industries, its entrepreneurs, its standards of craft.
MARTULL is La Casa Martull continued. Not as a replica of what existed, not as a tribute to what was lost, but as a working watch house with the same commitment to craft that earned the original its place on San Rafael.
Heritage Isn’t Inherited. It’s Rebuilt.
The standard that Calle San Rafael 45 represented was simple. A house earns its reputation through the quality of what it makes, not the story it tells about itself.
MARTULL holds to that standard. Assembled in Miami. Built with intention. Made for the people who understand that legacy is not something you receive. It is something you build.