Rare pink diamond goes on display in France 100 years after amateur heist
The French royal jewel will be on public display for the first time since it was found hidden in an apple after a 1926 theft.
Rare pink diamond goes on display in France 100 years after amateur heist
The nine-carat, pear-shaped gemstone was one of few royal jewels to survive the French Revolution
A rare pink diamond is being exhibited in France for the first time since it was stolen nearly 100 years ago to the day, marking the last occasion it was shown publicly.
The nine-carat, pear-shaped stone, called the "Grand Condé," was taken in an overnight break-in at the Château de Chantilly in October 1926 and hidden inside a hollowed-out apple.
The diamond, one of the few royal jewels to survive the French Revolution, was found a few weeks later after a hungry maid at the hotel where the thieves were staying bit into the apple.
It will be on view again in the Condé Museum at the Château de Chantilly until 3 January.
Museum director Mathieu Deldicque said that although the apple tale may sound unlikely, it was widely reported in newspapers at the time.
Deldicque has also been asked whether the exhibition is tempting fate, particularly given the wave of heists targeting European cultural institutions over the past 12 months, including the brazen daytime theft of jewellery from the Louvre museum in Paris.
He declined to tell CNN how much the diamond was insured for, but said extensive academic research into the diamond’s properties had been carried out to make it uniquely identifiable.
The findings of that analysis, along with previously unseen archival material on the gem’s history and theft, are included in the exhibition, according to the museum.
Naturally occurring pink diamonds are extremely rare and often command prices in the tens of millions of dollars. The highest price ever paid for one at auction was $71.2m (£53.6m) in 2017, according to Sotheby's.
The precise origins of the Grand Condé are still unknown.
The Château de Chantilly said it was first recorded in 1740 in an inventory of Louis Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, compiled after his death.
It later became part of the collection of Queen Marie-Amélie of Bourbon-Sicily, the wife of French King Louis Philippe I, and then of her son, Prince Henri d'Orléans, the Duke of Aumale.
He left it to the Institut de France, which now owns the Château de Chantilly, 50km (31 miles) north of Paris, together with thousands of artworks and manuscripts that formed the Musée Condé collection.