The Florentine Diamond
A hundred and thirty-seven carats, vanished into exile.
- EXISTED
- Known from the 15th century, lost after 1918
- WHERE
- Florence, then Vienna
- LOST
- After 1918
- CAUSE OF LOSS
- Carried into exile by a fallen dynasty, then lost from record
The Florentine Diamond was a pale yellow stone of some hundred and thirty-seven carats, cut in an intricate double rose, with a history reaching back through the Medici of Florence to the Habsburgs of Austria, who set it among their crown jewels. It was one of the most famous diamonds in the world, its image known from royal portraits across three centuries.
When the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed at the end of the First World War, the imperial family went into exile and took the diamond with them. There the clear thread of its history snaps. It is variously said to have been stolen, smuggled to South America, or quietly recut into smaller, unrecognisable stones and sold to survive. Whatever the truth, the Florentine as the world knew it, that singular, storied jewel, simply ceased to be.
The great yellow diamond left Austria with the exiled imperial family after the empire fell in 1918, and was never reliably seen again. It is rumoured to have been recut and sold, stone by stone, until the Florentine ceased to exist as itself.