On This Day – September 11th

The Hope Diamond, also known as Le Bijou du Roi ("the King's Jewel"), Le bleu de France ("France's Blue"), and the Tavernier Blue, is a large, 45.52-carat (just over 9 grammes), deep-blue diamond, now housed in the National Gem and Mineral collection at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., USA.

It is blue to the naked eye due to the presence of trace amounts of boron within its crystal structure, and exhibits a red phosphorescence under exposure to ultraviolet light.

It has been described as the "most famous diamond in the world".

On September 11th 1792, while Louis XVI and his family were imprisoned in the Temple in the early stages of the 'Reign of Terror' during the French Revolution, a group of thieves broke into the Royal Storehouse, the Hôtel du Garde-Meuble de la Couronne (now Hôtel de la Marine), and stole most of the Crown Jewels during a five-day looting spree. While many jewels were later recovered, including other pieces of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the French Blue was not among them and it disappeared from history.

A likely scenario is that the diamond, was smuggled to London. A blue diamond with the same shape, size, and colour as the Hope Diamond was recorded by John Francillon in the possession of the London diamond merchant Daniel Eliason in September 1812, the earliest point when the history of the Hope Diamond can be definitively fixed. Conveniently, its reappearance was almost exactly twenty years after the theft of the French Blue, just as the statute of limitations for the crime had taken effect.

There was some doubt as to whether this diamond was the same one that had belonged to the French royalty. Scientific investigations in 2008 confirmed "beyond reasonable doubt" that they were one and the same – the Hope Diamond had indeed been cut from the French Blue.

The stone was acquired by London banker Thomas Hope for a figure reported to be as much as $90,000 – more than $6m today. In 1839, the Hope Diamond appeared in a published catalogue of the gem collection of Henry Philip Hope, who was a member of the same Anglo-Dutch banking family.

The stone was set in a fairly simple medallion surrounded by many smaller white diamonds, which he sometimes lent to Louisa de la Poer Beresford, the widow of his brother, Thomas Hope, for society balls. After falling into the ownership of the Hope family, the stone came to be known as the "Hope Diamond".

In 1958 the stone was given by its then owner to Washington's National Museum of Natural History where it has remained ever since, on permanent exhibition.

How much is the Hope Diamond insured for?

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