Florentine Diamond Was Thought to Be Lost. It's Been Tucked Away in Bank Vault

Empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma wanted the jewel’s location to be kept secret for 100 years after the death of her husband, Charles I, in 1922. Their descendants now plan to display it at a museum

Charles I and his wife Zita, photographed around 1916, fled to Switzerland at the end of World War I. Hulton Archive / Getty Images

For decades, the 137-carat yellow diamond that belonged to Europe’s powerful Habsburg family was a source of intrigue and speculation. Some theorized the pear-shaped gem—which appeared to have vanished at the end of World War I—had been stolen or cut into smaller pieces, or maybe it had simply been lost to history.

Now, however, the elusive stone, known as the Florentine Diamond, has resurfaced, reports the New York Times’ Robin Pogrebin. Members of the Habsburg family recently approached reporters, revealing for the first time that the diamond has for years been tucked away safely in a Canadian bank vault.

Looking ahead, they hope to put the Florentine Diamond and other family jewels on display at a museum, as a show of gratitude to Canada for welcoming the family during World War II.

“It should be part of a trust here in Canada,” Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen, one of the family members who revealed the gem’s whereabouts, tells the Times. “It should be on exhibition in Canada sometimes, so that people can actually see those pieces.”

Meanwhile, Austrian officials are now investigating whether the gem is the property of the government.

The Florentine Diamond is so-named because, before passing into the hands of the Habsburgs in 1736, it belonged to the Medicis, the Italian family that ruled Florence for three centuries.

The gem seemingly disappeared around 1919, when Charles I—the emperor of Austria-Hungary—fled with his family to Switzerland amid the collapse of the Habsburg empire at the end of World War I. The assassination of his uncle, Franz Ferdinand, in 1914 was one of the factors that gave rise to the conflict in the first place.

Charles also took steps to safeguard the family’s jewels, sending them along to Switzerland as well. But from there, the story of the gems, including the Florentine Diamond, was always a bit murky. Many assumed that the diamond was “unlikely to ever be publicly seen again,” as the Daily Beast’s Allison McNearney wrote in 2016.

From Switzerland, the family moved to the island of Madeira, where Charles died of pneumonia in 1922. After his death, his wife, Empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma, and her children relocated to Spain, then Belgium. During World War II, Zita and the children fled to the United States before eventually settling in Quebec, Canada.

“I like Canada,” she once told a journalist, per the Globe and Mail’s Eric Andrew-Gee. “I like Quebec. I am very fond of French Canadians. They have been kind and considerate of us and, cold as Quebec winters are, they remind me of the winters in Austria. I am making no plans to leave.”

Per the Times, Zita brought the jewels with her in a small cardboard suitcase, which she eventually placed in a Quebec bank vault. Zita did later return to Europe, but she opted to leave the gems in Canada. She died in 1989 at the age of 96.

Zita had asked the family to keep the diamond’s location hidden for at least a century after her husband’s death. For years, only two other people—the couple’s sons Robert and Rodolphe—knew where it was. They, in turn, shared the secret with their children before they died.

“I have the feeling she was very glad that some important objects of the family are something that she had saved,” Habsburg-Lothringen tells the Times. “That was historically very important for her, because she was somebody who was thinking very much in historic terms.”

Everyone kept quiet in a bid to protect the gem. Habsburg-Lothringen himself only recently learned of its whereabouts from his cousins, Lorenz von Habsburg-Lothringen (Robert’s son) and Simeon von Habsburg-Lothringen (Rodolphe’s son).

“The less people know about it, the bigger the security,” Habsburg-Lothringen tells the Times.

The three men, who live in Europe, recently traveled to Canada to see the Florentine Diamond first-hand and show it to a Times reporter and photographer. At the same time, they also admired several other family heirlooms, including a diamond-encrusted medal commemorating the Order of the Golden Fleece, the house order of the Habsburg family established in 1430.

The Times describes the Florentine Diamond as “still glittering and arresting” even after being wrapped in yellowed paper inside a battered suitcase in the vault for decades.

• More about:
• Austria
• Canada
• European History
• Gems
• History
• Hungary
• Jewelry
• World War I
• World War II