![Rudolf Stadler met a bloody end on 16 October 1637. Illustration by Marco Heer](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/Illu2-300x225.jpg)
The Shah’s Swiss watchmaker
Zurich watchmaker Rudolf Stadler came to a bloody end on 16 October 1637. At the age of 32, the first Court watchmaker to the Shah of Persia in Isfahan was executed by sword. His story sounds like a tale from One Thousand and One Nights.
![None of the timepieces made by Rudolf Stadler remain. This automaton clock featuring an Ottoman rider from the Basel Historical Museum, which was produced around 1580 in Augsburg, provides a good idea of the timepieces that formed an integral part of the Emperor’s tributes to the Sultan in the 16th and 17th centuries.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/turkenstatue-238x300.jpg)
Rudolf Stadler’s origins
![Portrait of Johann Rudolf Schmid, circa 1770.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/johann-rudolf-schmid-190x300.jpg)
![Stadler’s travel companion: Jean-Baptiste Tavernier.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/tavernier-247x300.jpg)
![Title page of the German edition of ‘Les six voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’, printed by Johann Hermann Widerhold in Geneva in 1681.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/Reisetagebuch-2-205x300.jpg)
![Shah Safi I had a close relationship with Swiss watchmaker Johann Rudolf Stadler.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/safi-i-216x300.jpg)
Stadler met a bloody end
![Depiction of Johann Rudolf Stadler’s execution on the Meidan-e Shah (Royal Square) in the third edition of the travelogue by Adam Olearius, published in 1663.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/hinrichtung-300x246.jpg)
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier and Vaud
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier had an obvious weakness for Vaud. In his notes on the journey from Constantinople to Isfahan, on which he was accompanied by Stadler, he compared the region around Yerevan to Vaud: “I cannot compare this mountainous tract, whether for its valleys or rivers, or for the nature of the soil, to anywhere that I have seen, better than to that portion of Switzerland called the Pays de Vaud; and it is said by the natives that certain people who lived between the Alps and the Jura, and who composed a squadron of Alexander’s Army, having served him in his conquests, settled in this part of Armenia and made it look like their own country” (cited from ‘The six voyages of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier... to Turkey, Persia and India over forty years’ which was published by Johann Hermann Widerhold in Geneva in 1681). In 1670, Tavernier finally acquired the Aubonne Barony and had the castle renovated and converted. In the process, the original rectangular tower was given its distinctive appearance, reminiscent of an oriental minaret with a Russian domed roof, marking it out as a local landmark in Aubonne.