The Florentine Diamond has been found after more than a century

The famous Florentine Diamond, missing for more than a century, has finally been found. The 137-carat, pear-cut diamond with a signature yellow hue was worn by European royalty for centuries, but had not been seen since around 1918. Now, it has been located in a bank vault in Canada, per a special report from The New York Times.

The diamond is currently owned by descendants of the Austro-Hungarian royal family, who have finally come forward to share their family secret and reveal how the jewel made it out of Europe. The stone’s last known owners were Charles I, the last emperor of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and his wife, Empress Zita. The pair fled Austria with their children at the end of World War I, and it was widely believed that the jewel was lost. Charles I died in 1922, and Zita and the rest of the family eventually relocated to Canada to evade the Nazis during World War II. There have been numerous theories that the displaced royal family sold the stone to an unknown buyer. According to another, the diamond was gifted to a family servant, who then took it to South America.

However, the couple’s grandson, Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen, his grandmother travelled with the diamond, assumed that she placed the treasures in the Canadian bank upon arriving in Canada, and it was just there. Von Habsburg-Lothringen said that Zita, who died in 1989, and her sons Robert and Rodolphe, requested that the location of the stone be kept a secret for 100 years after the death of her husband. Austria’s former imperial court jeweler, Christoph Köchert, has since examined the diamond and confirmed its authenticity.

“It should be part of a trust here in Canada. It should be on exhibition in Canada sometimes, so that people can actually see those pieces,” von Habsburg-Lothringen said.