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BESANÇON, France — Besançon, the ancient city in the eastern part of the country near the border with Switzerland, is known as the watch capital of France.

It is that — but this community of about 120,000 also is the birthplace of Victor Hugo and the Lumière brothers, the home of the University of Franche-Comté and a Unesco World Heritage site for its citadel and fortifications, part of the defensive system built around France by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban under orders from King Louis XIV.

Besançon dates to the Gauls, and to the Romans, whose triumphal arch and columns can be seen in and near the Square Castan. The area also is the site of the Cathédrale St. Jean de Besançon, with its renown astronomical clock of some 30,000 mechanical parts and dozens of figures that re-enact Christ’s burial and resurrection every day.

After all, the city may have a varied history but it still revolves around time.

“There is nobody in Besançon who doesn’t have somebody in his family who has made watches,” said Philippe Lebru, the founder of Utinam, the clock and watch company named after the city’s Latin motto (in English: “If God wills”).

Besançon’s formal watchmaking role began shortly after the French Revolution, when the government decided to create a production center so the country could stop relying on imports from England and Switzerland.

(Why Besançon? “It was near Switzerland,” said Sebastian Laporte, who gives guided tours of the city.)

The businesses grew quickly. By the 1800s and the early 1900s, the owners of watch companies were living in elegant townhouses built of the region’s distinctive pierre de Chailluz, a limestone in mottled tones of gray and beige. Ateliers, with extra-wide windows to let in the light so workers could see the tiny pieces they assembled, were tucked behind the homes.

The Musée du Temps reflects the city’s role in timepieces “from sundials to atomic clocks,” according to its director, Laurence Reibel (and plays host in June each year to the Les 24H du Temps fair held in its courtyard).

The astronomical clock at the Cathédrale St. Jean de Besançon has 30,000 mechanical parts and dozens of figures that re-enact Christ’s burial and resurrection.CreditAlex Cretey-Systermans for The New York Times

The museum’s displays include an example of a timepiece from Besançon’s glory days: the Leroy 01, completed in 1904. It has 24 complications, and for decades, Ms. Reibel said, was considered the world’s most complicated watch.

The watch industry here, which now employs around 1,500 people, had 20,000 workers then.

The decline came to Besançon in what locals call La Crise du Quartz, the sharp downturn in mechanical watch production and sales that followed the rise of quartz watches in the 1970s.

Lip, the timekeeper of the Tour de France in the 1950s, closed its doors in 1977. The change in the city was palpable. Afterward, when 5 p.m. rolled round — the time the Lip workers usually went home — “the streets of Besancon were silent; no one was driving their car home,” said Frédérique Coobar, the city’s public relations manager, who grew up here. Over the years, other companies closed.

The watch school, École Nationale d’Horlogerie de Mécanique d’Électricité, closed. The company that made movements, France Ebauches, closed.

The Observatoire, shown here in an undated photo, opened in 1880 to certify the accuracy of timepieces using the stars.CreditPaul Fearn/Alamy

Because the city’s residents were known for their precision work on watches, their skills soon were transferred to work on the microtechnologies required to manufacture medical devices and instruments for the defense and aeronautics industries. “Besançon became the capital of microtechnology,” Mr. Laporte said.

But since the 1990s, watch and clock making has been coming back.

Long case clocks with a distinctive hourglass shape, called Comtoise clocks, have long been made in ateliers in the outskirts of the city and in the villages of the surrounding Jura mountains. Now, two men are keeping them alive: Philippe Vuillemin bought an old factory 12 years ago, and after making the necessary tools — “They were all gone during the war,” he said — he began producing about 100 Comtoise clocks a year at his Manufacture Vuillemin business.

It would be safe to say the tall clocks that Mr. Lebru makes at Utinam were inspired by the Comtoise design, but their stainless steel cases bear little resemblance to the originals. Also, he patented his design for a suspended cage to hold the internal mechanism so the clocks no longer have to rest on flat surfaces.

Mr. Lebru was the designer of the clock, a six-ton wall installation, that greets visitors at the TGV train station in Besançon. He said that a Swiss company has ordered one; “This means so much, that the Swiss should come to me, a Frenchman.”

A Vuillemin clock from the Kairos collection.

Mr. Lebru also makes watches with a twist, like the one with hands that circle counterclockwise, intended for left-handed wearers. His shop on Grande Rue sells the watches made in Besançon by brands such as Humbert-Droz, Lornet, March LA.B and FOB Paris.

In the spring he plans to open a glass-fronted workshop in the mostly pedestrian Old Town so people can watch him work, and to sell online. “Things are changing,” he said. “Three young French watchmakers are coming to Besançon, because of its renown for horlogerie. Today, with the computer for knowledge and Kickstarter for funding, it’s easier to design and make a watch.”

The quartz crisis also led to the closure of many of Besançon’s repair shops, which serviced the mechanical watches made in the city. But gradually that sector has been reviving, too. In 2012 Breitling opened a new glass and blond wood service center in an industrial park; its director, Steve Napias, arrived in the region last year from Breitling’s operations in Toronto. “There people would tell me, ‘Oh, I’ve never met a watchmaker before,’” he said. “Here, everyone knows a watchmaker.”

Other watch service centers are in and around Besançon, said Pierre Dieterle, the economic director for greater Besançon: “There’s Swatch, Festina from Spain, Seiko from Japan, Tissot and Longines.” Audemars Piguet has a center, too.

The six-ton wall clock that greets visitors at the TGV train station in town was designed by Philippe Lebru.CreditHemis/Alamy

According to Mr. Dieterle, there are also companies producing watches or watch components for Zadig & Voltaire, Cerrutti, Christian Lacroix, Ted Lapidus, Mugler and what he described as “les grandes marques de la Place Vendôme,” the luxury jewelry and watch houses grouped around the famous square in Paris.

Another Bisontin institution also has made a comeback. The Observatoire de Besançon, opened in 1880 to certify the accuracy of timepieces using the stars, has worked its way back to certifying about 100 watches a year. It had shut down in 1970 but reopened in 2002 and now is operated by the university.

François Vernotte, who ran the observatory for 10 years after its reopening, displayed the operation of the old meridian telescope, which looks like a cannon but is, in fact, accurate “to one-tenth of a second,” he said.

Now atomic timekeepers are used to check watches for accuracy, and Joël Petetin, a technician at the Observatoire, said requests come from “mostly independent watchmakers, like Kari Voutilainen and Laurent Ferrier.”

“We only certify chronometers now, and our requests have doubled every year,” Mr. Petetin said. The process takes about two weeks and costs 400 euros ($480); watches that pass can be stamped with the city’s emblem, the head of a viper, and receive a certificate.

So much history — yet, back at the Vuilleman workshop, the future is being trained.

Emilien Theurot, 14, was sorting gears at a work desk as his “stage,” the one-week work experience required of all French students.

Like all good Bisontins, horlogerie is in his blood; “my grandmother worked with watches,” he explained.

And why do his work experience here? “Because,” he said, “I’m passionate about movements.”