A rare pink diamond is going on display in France for the first time since it was stolen almost 100 years ago to the day – the last time it was shown to the public.<\/p>\n
The nine-carat, pear-shaped gemstone known as the “Grand Cond\u00e9” was pilfered in an overnight raid on the Ch\u00e2teau de Chantilly in October 1926 and concealed in a hollowed-out apple.<\/p>\n
The diamond – one of few royal jewels to survive the French Revolution – was recovered a few weeks later when a hungry maid at the hotel in which the thieves were staying took a bite of the apple.<\/p>\n
It will once again be on display in the Cond\u00e9 Museum at the Ch\u00e2teau de Chantilly until 3 January.<\/p>\n
The museum’s director Mathieu Deldicque said that while the apple story may sounds far-fetched, it was widely covered by newspapers at the time. <\/p>\n
Deldicque has faced questions about whether the exhibition may be tempting fate, especially given the string of heists on European cultural institutions in the past 12 months, including the daring daylight robbery of jewellery from the Louvre museum in Paris.<\/p>\n
While he declined to reveal to CNN how much the diamond was insured for, he noted that extensive academic study into the properties of the diamond had taken place to make it uniquely identifiable.<\/p>\n
The results of this analysis, as well as previously unseen archive material about the gem’s history and theft, form part of the exhibition, according to the museum.<\/p>\n
Naturally occurring pink diamonds are exceptionally rare and often sell for tens of millions of dollars. The highest price ever fetched for one at auction was $71.2m (\u00a353.6m) in 2017, according to Sotheby’s.<\/p>\n
The exact origins of the Grand Cond\u00e9 remain a mystery.<\/p>\n
It was first mentioned in 1740 in an inventory of Louis Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Cond\u00e9, drawn up following his death, the Ch\u00e2teau de Chantilly said.<\/p>\n
It then became part of the collection of Queen Marie-Am\u00e9lie of Bourbon-Sicily, the wife of French King Louis Philippe I, and then her son, Prince Henri of Orl\u00e9ans, the Duke of Aumale.<\/p>\n
He bequeathed it to the Institut de France, which now owns the Ch\u00e2teau de Chantilly, 50km (31 miles) north of Paris, along with thousands of artworks and manuscripts which became the Mus\u00e9e Cond\u00e9 collection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A rare pink diamond is going on display in France for the first time since it was stolen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-805632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}