In this article the problem of tracking rigid 3D objects is addressed. The contribution of the proposed approach is an algorithm which combines: efficiency (i.e. the algorithm is designed before all to be real time using standard architecture), robustness (occlusions are allowed) and accuracy (sub-pixel accuracy is obtained). It is devoted to the tracking of 3D rigid objects, assuming that the 3D geometry as well as the texture of the surface is known. Such performances can be obtained through a two levels scheme: the core of the approach consists in an efficient 2D patch tracker whose results are combined robustly to compute the 3D object pose. This article provides experimental results proving the soundness of the proposed approach.