Stolen pink diamond returns to display at French château after nearly 100 years

A rare nine-carat pink diamond stolen from a French château in 1926 is going on public display there again, almost a century after it was last exhibited.

Known as the Grand Condé, the pear-shaped stone will be shown at the Condé Museum in the Château de Chantilly until 3 January. The museum says the exhibition includes academic research into the diamond’s identifying properties, as well as previously unseen archive material about its history and theft. [1]

The diamond was taken during an overnight raid in October 1926. It was reportedly hidden inside a hollowed-out apple and recovered weeks later after a maid at the hotel where the thieves were staying bit into it. Museum director Mathieu Deldicque said newspapers at the time widely reported the apple story. [1]

The Grand Condé is among the few royal jewels to have survived the French Revolution. Its exact origins remain unknown: it was first recorded in an inventory made after the death of Louis Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, in 1740. It later belonged to Queen Marie-Amélie of Bourbon-Sicily and her son, the Duke of Aumale, who bequeathed it to the Institut de France. [1]

The display comes amid a series of heists at European cultural institutions over the past year, including a daylight jewellery robbery at the Louvre in Paris. Deldicque declined to tell CNN how much the diamond was insured for, but said research had made it possible to identify the stone uniquely. [1]