This stone, paradoxically celebrated for its beauty yet feared for its curse, is the Hope Diamond. The size of a walnut and deep blue in color, it is the world's best-known diamond. Over its 370-year-long, often murky history, it has become immersed in legend, stolen at least twice and cut four times. Its owners have included sultans, kings, bankers, jewelers, thieves, a popular stage performer and a fabulously wealthy heiress.
Since 1958, the Hope Diamond has been a major attraction at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) in Washington D.C., where it has been viewed by more than 100 million visitors and is currently valued at over $250 million.
PLUCKED FROM THE EYE OF AN IDOL
The Hope Diamond's strange story began in 1653 when French gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier visited India's Golconda Sultanate. There he purchased a crudely cut, triangular, flat, blue diamond of extraordinary size-115 carats. According to legend, this diamond, now known as the "Tavernier Diamond," had been cursed since it previously had been plucked from the eye of a statue of a Hindu idol.
After returning to Europe in 1668, Tavernier sold the diamond to King Louis XIV of France, who ordered the stone recut. Tavernier wrote extensively about the gem before his death in Moscow the following year-when he was reportedly dismembered by a pack of wild dogs.
THE "FRENCH BLUE" AND THE GUILLOTINE
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