A tiara, necklace and earring from a sapphire set owned by Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense were among the jewels stolen in Paris. Photograph: Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty
The chances of recovering the Napoleonic crown jewels nabbed by a burglary gang from the Louvre are limited, if the story of the Irish crown jewel heist is anything to go by.
On June 6th, 1907, the jewels, associated with the knightly Order of St Patrick, went missing days before a visit by British King Edward VII. They consisted of a star decorated with diamonds, an emerald and a ruby, another diamond badge and five gold jewel-encrusted collars, amounting to 394 jewels in total.
Who took them? How did they snatch them from a Dublin Castle tower which was “constantly and systematically occupied by soldiers and policemen”? Did they wear a high-vis like the Paris thieves? We still don’t know.
It made global headlines, and no less a personage than Arthur Conan Doyle, inventor of Sherlock Holmes, volunteered himself to help solve the mystery.
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