The Napoleon Diamond Necklace

The Napoleon Diamond Necklace was given to Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife, the Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria. He married her but two months of divorcing Empress Joséphine, under the grounds that she could not produce a male heir. Marie Louise managed to give birth to a son within the year. Napoleon was so pleased that he commissioned a Parisian jewelry producer to create the Napoleon Diamond Necklace, an absurdly decadent piece of jewelry.

The Napoleon Diamond Necklace consists of 234 colorless diamonds of various cuts and sizes set in both silver and gold. These diamonds have never been removed from their settings, so they cannot have been given the same appraisal as EGL loose diamonds, but they have been examined by certified professionals. There are some flaws and impurities in the diamonds, but they are still of extremely high quality. Many of the diamonds are fluorescent and of a rare type, making them all the more valuable.

After Napoleon’s reign ended and he was exiled, Marie Louise took the necklace with her to Vienna, Austria as she returned home to live with her family. She kept it for the rest of her life, whereupon it was inherited by Archduchess Sophie of Austria. Sophie shortened the necklace by removing two of the diamonds, which she had crafted into a pair of earrings. The location of these earrings, to this day, is unknown but they were rumored to be stolen at one point in history.

When Sophie died in 1872, she passed the necklace on to her three sons, Archdukes Ludwig Victor, Charles Louise, and Franz Joseph, whom were expected to share. Charles convinced his other brothers, through negotiations and bargains, to give him full ownership of the necklace. He loved the best value diamonds in the necklace and kept it for himself until his death in 1914, whereupon his third wife, Maria Theresa of Portugal, was permitted inheritance.

Near the beginning of the Great Depression in the United States, Maria Theresa hired a couple of people to sell the necklace. Unfortunately, everyone’s impoverished state made it impossible for her to get her desired price. A panic and legal battle ensued, whereupon nobody got very much money, and the diamond sellers fled the country. Maria Theresa ultimately made the decision to keep the necklace for the rest of her days. Four years after her death, it was sold to an industrialist named Paul-Louis Weiller.

Weiller kept the necklace for many years, and it is unsure as to if he was an advocate of the non conflict diamond laws that were being set in place to avoid the production of blood diamonds. In 1960, he sold it to Harry Winston, who valued the Napoleon necklace for its historic sentiment. Within the year, he sold it to Marjorie Merriweather Post, who donated it to the Smithsonian Institution two years later. The Smithsonian has kept it since, displaying it in the National Museum of Natural History and appreciating it tremendously.