These elegant diamonds have sparkled through generations while being handed down to different owners. They have seen the changing face of history through countless eras. Let’s take a closer look at the gems and the stories of greed, passion, envy, obsession, love and worship that have shaped the times gone by.

KOH-I-NOOR ('Mountain of Light')

First mentioned in 1304, it weighed 186 carats and was an oval cut stone.  It is believed to have once been set in the famous peacock throne of Shah Jehan as one of the peacock's eyes.  Re-cut in the reign of Queen Victoria, it is among the British Crown Jewels and now weighs 108.93 carats.

The Cullinan

The largest diamond ever found was 3,106 carats in rough and originally weighed just less than one and a half pounds.  It was found in South Africa and was named after the owner of the mining company. The Cullinan was cut into 9 major stones and 96 smaller stones. The largest was named the “Star of Africa” and is 530 carats by itself.

The Star of Africa

The largest stone cut from the Cullinan.  In 1907 this diamond was given to King Edward VII of England, and set into the Royal Scepter. It is kept, along with the other Crown Jewels, safely in the Tower of London. It weighs 530.20 carats and has 74 facets and is still the largest cut diamond in the world.

The Excelsior

Probably the second largest stone ever found. A high-clarity, blue-white stone, it was found in l893 by a South African mine worker who picked it out of a shovelful of gravel.

Because of its irregular shape, it was cut into 21 polished stones, of which the largest was a marquise of 69.80 carats. A smaller, 18-carat marquise stone, cut from the Excelsior was displayed at the l939 World's Fair by De Beers.

The Great Mogul

The Great Mogul was discovered in the 17th century.  The stone was named after Shah Jehan who built the Taj Mahal.  The rough is said to have weighed 793 carats. It was found in the mid-seventeenth century in Hyderabad, India. It is said that the stone was so badly cut that the lapidary, instead of being paid by the Shah, was forced to pay a heavy fine.

Its whereabouts are not presently known, and it may no longer exist as a single large Stone. It has been confused with several other famous diamonds, most importantly the Orloff, which has also been described as a faintly blue rose-cut stone.

The Orloff

The Orloff is thought to have weighed about 300 carats when it was found.  At one time it was confused with the Great Mogul.  One tale told is that the Orloff was set as the eye of a god in the temple of Sri Rangen and was stolen by a French soldier disguised as a Hindu. He is said to have escaped by swimming down a raging river during a storm. It was eventually sold to Prince Gregory Orloff. In an attempt to win back her heart, he gave it to Catherine the Great, who collected lovers and precious gems with equal passion. She had the diamond mounted on top of the double eagle in the Imperial scepter. It is in the Russian Diamond Fund, Moscow.

The Idol's Eye

A flattened pear shaped stone the size of a bantam's egg, its polished size is 70.20 carats.  This is another famous diamond that was once set in the eye of an idol before it was stolen.  Legend also has it that it was given as a ransom for Princess Rasheetah by the Sheik of Kashmir to the Sultan of Turkey who had abducted her.

The Regent

A truly historic diamond discovered in 1701 by an Indian slave near Golconda, it weighed 410 carats in the rough.  Once owned by William Pitt, the English Prime Minister, it was cut into a cushion shaped brilliant of 140.50 carats and, until it was sold to the Duke of Orleans, Regent of France when Louis XV was a boy in 1717, was called The Pitt.  It was then renamed The Regent and set in the crown Louis XV wore at his coronation.  After the French revolution, it was owned by Napoleon Bonaparte who set it in the hilt of his sword.  It is now on display in the Louvre.

The Blue Hope

It’s your choice to believe in curses or not but when it comes to this diamond, it was said to be cursed after it was stolen from an idol in India. More notorious than any other diamond, the Hope was once owned by Louis XIV and was officially designated 'the blue diamond of the crown.' Stolen during the French Revolution, it turned up in London in 1830 and was bought by Henry Philip Hope, after whom it is currently named. It was while the diamond was in the possession of the Hope family that it acquired its gruesome reputation for bad luck.  All his family died in poverty.  A similar misfortune befell a later owner, Mr. Edward McLean.  It is now in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

The Sancy

It weighed 55 carats and was cut in a pear shape.  It was first owned by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, who lost it in battle in 1477.  The stone is in fact named after a later owner, Seigneur de Sancy, a French Ambassador to Turkey in the late 16th century.  He loaned it to the French king, Henry III, who wore it in the cap with which he concealed his baldness.  Henry IV of France also borrowed the stone from Sancy, but it was sold in 1664 to James I of England.  In 1688, James II, last of the Stuart kings of England, fled with it to Paris.  It disappeared during the French Revolution.

Taylor-Burton

This pear-shaped 69.42 carat diamond was sold at auction in 1969 with the understanding that it could be named by the buyer.  Cartier of New York successfully bid for it and immediately christened it 'Cartier.'  However, the next day Richard Burton bought the stone for Elizabeth Taylor for an undisclosed sum, renaming it the 'Taylor-Burton.'  It made its debut at a charity ball in Monaco in mid-November where Miss Taylor wore it as a pendant.  In 1978, Elizabeth Taylor announced that she was putting it up for sale and planned to use part of the proceeds to build a hospital in Botswana.  Just to inspect the diamond, prospective buyers had to pay $2,500 to cover the cost of showing it.  In June 1979, it was sold for nearly $3 million and was last reported to be in Saudi Arabia.

The Spoonmaker Diamond

It has many legends associated with it. (It supposedly got its name when the owner–who is said to have found it sitting on top of a pile of garbage –bartered it to a spoonmaker for three wooden spoons.) More likely is that it was purchased by a Frenchman named Pikot, who bought it from the Maharajah of Madras in India. He took it to France, but was robbed. The diamond ended up at an auction, and was bid on by the notorious Casanova. It was finally bought by Napoleon’s mother, Letizia Ramolino, who later sold her jewelry to help her son escape from Elba. It was bought again by an officer of Tepedelenli, and put into the treasury. When Tepedelenli was killed during a revolt, the entire treasury went to the Palace of Turkey, and the Spoonmaker’s Diamond, now called the “Kasicki” is there.

Hortensia

This peach colored stone of 20 carats was named after Hortense de Beauharnais, Queen of Holland, who was Josephine's daughter and the stepdaughter of Napoleon Bonaparte.  The Hortensia had been part of the French Crown Jewels since Louis XIV bought it.  Along with the Regent, it is now on display at the Louvre, Paris