Grand Condé Pink Diamond Returns to Public View in France After Nearly a Century

A rare pink diamond, the Grand Condé, is now on public display in France for the first time since its theft nearly a century ago.

The nine‑carat pear‑shaped gem, known as the Grand Condé, was taken during an overnight break‑in at the Château de Chantilly in October 1926, hidden inside a hollowed apple.

The stone, one of the few royal jewels to survive the French Revolution, was recovered weeks later when a hungry hotel maid took a bite of the apple, exposing the theft.

It will be exhibited again at the Condé Museum within the Château de Chantilly until 3 January.

Museum director Mathieu Deldicque noted that although the apple story may sound far‑fetched, it was widely reported in contemporary newspapers.

Deldicque has been asked whether the exhibition could be inviting trouble, especially after a series of museum heists across Europe over the past year, such as the daylight theft of jewellery from the Louvre in Paris.

He declined to disclose the diamond’s insurance value to CNN but said that extensive academic study of its properties had been conducted to make it uniquely identifiable.

Findings from this analysis, together with newly uncovered archival material on the gem’s history and the theft, are featured in the exhibition, the museum says.

Natural pink diamonds are exceptionally rare and typically command prices in the tens of millions of dollars; the highest auction price recorded was $71.2 million (£53.6 million) in 2017, according to Sotheby’s.

Its precise origins remain shrouded in mystery.

The Château de Chantilly notes that the gem first appears in a 1740 inventory of Louis Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, compiled after his death.

It subsequently entered the collection of Queen Marie‑Amélie of Bourbon‑Sicily, wife of King Louis Philippe I, and later passed to her son, Prince Henri of Orléans, Duke of Aumale.

He bequeathed it to the Institut de France, which now owns the Château de Chantilly—located 50 km north of Paris—along with thousands of artworks and manuscripts that form the Musée Condé collection.

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