Ducati 100th Anniversary 1926-2026 Legends Tin Diorama

In July 1926, Ducati did not build motorcycles. Antonio Cavalieri Ducati and his three sons, Adriano, Bruno and Marcello, founded the company in Bologna to make parts for the new craze of radio, and their first hit was a capacitor sold under the Manens name. Engines only arrived after the Second World War, when Italy needed cheap transport and a small motor that clipped onto a bicycle turned a radio firm into a motorcycle maker.

Lift the lid of this tin and that journey is waiting inside. The lid shows the old Bologna factory in black and white, the city's towers on the skyline, an Imola banner and six red machines racing out of the past beneath a gold "100th Anniversary 1926–2026" laurel, with the line Style. Sophistication. Performance. along the bottom. Below it, six bikes stand on black plinths behind red rope, each with its own nameplate, while a trophy cabinet glows in the corner.

The open tin: Bologna on the lid, six Ducatis on display below.

Six motorcycles tell the century in the right order

Each bike has its own nameplate and its own bay. Read them from left to right, top row first, and they form a short history of how Ducati found its voice:

Motorcycle	Year	Why it matters
Cucciolo	1946	A tiny clip-on engine for bicycles, its name means "puppy" in Italian, and it put post-war Italians back on the road
750 SS	1972	Wears the No. 16 that Paul Smart carried to victory at the Imola 200 in April 1972, the race that announced Ducati among the big bikes
Monster	1993	Miguel Galluzzi stripped a sports bike down to engine, frame and tank, and started a family of naked bikes that is still going
916	1994	Massimo Tamburini's design, with its single-sided swingarm and under-seat exhausts, carried Carl Fogarty to World Superbike titles
Desmosedici GP	2007	The MotoGP machine on which Casey Stoner won Ducati's first premier-class world championship
Panigale V4 R	2022	The superbike Álvaro Bautista rode to the 2022 WorldSBK title, in the same season Pecco Bagnaia won MotoGP for Ducati

The Monster and the Panigale V4 R up close, with the trophy cabinet glowing behind them.

The racing chapters were won by fractions of a second

Ducati has always measured itself on a stopwatch. Smart's win at Imola came ahead of his teammate Bruno Spaggiari, and from that day the factory in Borgo Panigale treated racing as its showroom, building road bikes that looked and sounded like the machines on the grid.

The results kept arriving. Fogarty made the 916 the bike to beat in World Superbike, Stoner gave Ducati its first MotoGP crown in 2007, Bautista and Bagnaia doubled up in 2022, and Marc Márquez won the 2025 MotoGP title on a Ducati. It is no surprise the company chose A Century Made of Seconds as the theme of its centenary.

In low light, the red tin glows like a showroom after closing time.

The centenary brought riders home from every continent

Ducati marked its hundredth year with a centenary edition of World Ducati Week at Misano from 3 to 5 July 2026, and the company counted 118,036 visitors from dozens of countries. Most owners could not make the trip, and plenty of fans have never owned a Ducati at all. This little tin is for them, a museum hall that sits on a desk next to the keyboard.

It suits the rider with a 916 poster from the nineties or the Monster owner curious about where the bike came from. For a household that watches every Grand Prix weekend, pair it with our Formula 1 advent calendar.

Lifting out the Desmosedici GP, the bike behind Ducati’s first MotoGP title.

Written by Nadia Marsh, Collectibles Specialist at DoesignUs.