Rare pink diamond returns to display in France after 1926 theft

The Grand Condé, a rare nine-carat pink diamond stolen from France’s Château de Chantilly in October 1926, is returning to public display almost exactly a century later. BBC News reports that the pear-shaped royal gemstone will be exhibited at the château’s Condé Museum until 3 January, its first public showing since the theft.

Its recovery involved an unlikely hiding place: a hollowed-out apple. Thieves took the diamond during an overnight raid and concealed it in the fruit. A few weeks later, a hungry maid at the hotel where they were staying bit into the apple, leading to the jewel’s discovery.

An unusual recovery, documented in the archives

Museum director Mathieu Deldicque acknowledged that the apple episode might sound implausible, but said newspapers had reported it extensively at the time.

The exhibition brings together previously unseen archival material about the diamond’s history and theft, alongside findings from academic research into its physical properties, according to the museum. Deldicque said that work had made the stone uniquely identifiable.

The return to display has also prompted questions about security following a series of thefts at European cultural institutions over the past year, including the daylight jewellery robbery at the Louvre in Paris. Deldicque declined to disclose the diamond’s insured value when asked by CNN.

A royal jewel with an eighteenth-century record

One of the few royal jewels to survive the French Revolution, the Grand Condé first appears in a 1740 inventory prepared after the death of Louis Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, according to the Château de Chantilly.

It subsequently entered the collection of Queen Marie-Amélie of Bourbon-Sicily, wife of King Louis Philippe I, and then that of her son, Prince Henri of Orléans, the Duke of Aumale.

The duke left the diamond to the Institut de France together with thousands of artworks and manuscripts that became the Musée Condé collection. The institute now owns the Château de Chantilly, about 50km north of Paris.

Naturally occurring pink diamonds are exceptionally scarce and can command prices in the tens of millions of dollars. Sotheby’s puts the auction record for a pink diamond at $71.2 million, set in 2017; that figure is not a valuation of the Grand Condé.