Stolen Pink Diamond Returns to Public Display in France a Century After Apple Heist

A rare pink diamond once stolen in a daring overnight heist is going back on public display in France, almost exactly a century after it was last shown before thieves took it.

The nine-carat, pear-shaped gem known as the “Grand Condé” was taken during a raid on the Château de Chantilly in October 1926, hidden inside a hollowed-out apple. It resurfaced weeks later in unlikely fashion — a hungry hotel maid, where the thieves were staying, bit into the apple and discovered the jewel inside.

The diamond will now sit once again in the Condé Museum at the Château de Chantilly until 3 January. Museum director Mathieu Deldicque has acknowledged the apple story sounds implausible, but notes it was widely reported by newspapers at the time.

Deldicque has also faced questions about the wisdom of exhibiting such a valuable stone given a recent string of thefts at European cultural institutions, including the brazen daylight robbery of jewellery from the Louvre in Paris. He declined to disclose the diamond’s insured value to CNN, but said extensive scientific analysis has been carried out to make the stone uniquely identifiable should it ever go missing again. That research, along with previously unseen archival material on the gem’s history and theft, now forms part of the exhibition.

Natural pink diamonds of this kind are exceptionally scarce and routinely command tens of millions of dollars at auction; the record price for one stands at $71.2m (£53.6m), set in 2017, according to Sotheby’s.

The Grand Condé’s early history remains hazy. It first appears in the written record in 1740, listed in an inventory compiled after the death of Louis Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé. It later passed into the collection of Queen Marie-Amélie of Bourbon-Sicily, wife of French King Louis Philippe I, and then to her son, Prince Henri of Orléans, Duke of Aumale. He ultimately bequeathed the stone to the Institut de France, which still owns the Château de Chantilly — located roughly 50km (31 miles) north of Paris — along with thousands of artworks and manuscripts that together make up the Musée Condé collection.

Source: BBC News