The Florentine, Legendary “Lost” Diamond, Reportedly Resurfaces

By Rob Bates | November 06, 2025

The Florentine Diamond, a famed 137 ct. yellow pear-shape long considered lost, has resurfaced after apparently spending decades in a Quebec bank vault, according to a report in The New York Times.

For over a century, the diamond’s last recorded owner was Charles I, a member of the Hapsburg family, which ruled Austria from 1804 to 1918. When Charles I fled Vienna for Switzerland at the end of World War I, the diamond—then set in a brooch—was believed to have disappeared, and many thought it had been stolen or recut.

“The question of its whereabouts has continued till today to arouse the interest of gemologists and historians alike, and there has been considerable speculation on the subject,” Ian Balfour wrote in his 1987 book Famous Diamonds.

But according to today’s Times, the diamond was never really lost. Charles I took the gemstone with him to Switzerland, and it stayed with the family after they resettled in Belgium and Spain. As the Nazis moved across Europe, Charles I’s widow, Empress Zita, headed to America, packing the royal jewels in a “small cardboard suitcase,” the Times said.

“I assume that, at that stage, the little suitcase went into a bank safe, and that was it,” Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen, Charles I’s grandson, told the Times. “And in that bank safe, it just stayed.”

Zita only told her two sons where the diamond was stored, and they subsequently told their sons. The empress asked that the gem’s whereabouts be kept secret until 100 years after Charles I’s death, in 1922.

Habsburg-Lothringen told the Times that the family hopes to display the diamond at a Canadian museum. But they don’t plan to sell it, and couldn’t estimate its value.

Christopher Köchert, a jeweler with A.E. Köchert, Austria’s oldest jeweler, has signed a document attesting to its authenticity.

According to Balfour, the diamond’s history likely dates back to the 1400s. Gem merchant and chronicler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier called it the “largest diamond in Europe” after examining it in 1657, when it was owned by the Medicis, then rulers of Florence.

Jack Ogden, founder of the U.K.’s Society of Jewellery Historians, tells JCK that it’s “great that (a) it has surfaced and (b) it is not with some dealer and about to be recut into what some misguided folk might think would make it look better.”

Top: A rhinestone replica of the Florentine Diamond (photo from Wikipedia)