Tiaras Located in the Louvre Museum with the French Crown Jewels! Emerald, Sapphire & Pearl Tiara

Where or where are the tiaras hiding in the Louvre Museum? Yes, believe it or not, besides obviously the statue of Nike, you have the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, so many iconic, beautiful, world-breaking artistic pieces in the Louvre Museum there in Paris, France. You also have the French crown jewels and three tiaras that you can see. Yes, oh yes, I had been to the Louvre Museum, I believe three times before I found out somewhere that yes, there are actually tiaras in that museum. And when I went to Paris in September, I was like, you know what? I am going to track down these tiaras, which was more difficult than I thought it would be because it is sort of complicated in that museum. Believe it or not, I got a little lost. Well, I knew the ways I wanted to go and then it wouldn't let me go that way. That makes sense. I wanted to go up one way, the stairs, and they're like, no, you can only go one way. You can't go the other way. And I'm like, fine, whatever. But anyways, I ended up finding the tiara room and it is actually hiding behind the Nike statue. So this is a statue at the top of the stairs. It is the goddess Nike, or the goddess of victory, who was on a ship. And so you can see a little bit of the ship at the bottom, but she is armless, headless, and yet she has her wings. And this is my favorite statue of all time. I think it's absolutely gorgeous, beautiful. I love how they display it in the museum. And so if you want to see the tiaras for yourselves, now granted, granted, things move around in museums, so they may move it to another spot, but at least right now, if you actually, if you're looking at the statue and you go up the stairs to the left, and around there's a little alcove, and then you'll see this hallway with these glass cases. And that is where these tiaras reside. And they are beautiful, amazing, yet also somewhat surprising. So without further ado, let us go ahead and get into these tiaras. And yes, there are more jewels there, and I got more coverage, but I think we'll do that in a separate video. Today, we are just talking about the tiaras, yes. So the first one we're going to talk about is actually one of my favorite tiaras, because I have seen this one before. It is a shame we don't really have a picture or even a painting of anyone wearing it, which is, ugh, it's a travesty against tiara of a kind. And that is the Angloeme Emerald Tiara. Yes, I did not pronounce that correctly. And so this originally belonged to the Duchess of Angloeme, and she was Maria Theresa, and her parents were, believe it or not, King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. Yes, they did have one other children who survived, obviously, the French Revolution. And so she had these emeralds, and they were actually originally part of the French Crown Jewels. So these pieces have a great historical significance. And we actually see this within the UK as well, because they have, I believe it's Edward the Confessor, Sapphire, and they have a couple other pieces within the Imperial State Crown, or Black Prince Ruby, which are very, very notorious and very, very old pieces of jewelry. Because even in that time, I mean, obviously we value them now, but even in several hundred years ago, jewelry pieces like this were highly, highly valued. Only the upper, upper echelon of society had these emeralds. Now, I didn't figure out exactly where the emeralds came from, but they did belong to the French Crown Jewels. They were probably utilized in other pieces, either hair, brooches, those sorts of things. But given that tiaras were in the style in the early 1800s, especially in France, they were commissioned into this particular tiara by the jeweler Maison Bapst, the court jeweler to the House of Bourbon, which is the French House. And what's actually interesting about her is that she could have continued on her family line. Unfortunately, she was unable to have children. And so the future King of France, eventually after the whole rigmarole with Napoleon Bonaparte and the revolution and just all sorts of things, this time period of the 1800s in France is a lot of turmoil, a lot of turmoil in who is ruling the country. So it ended up being, the throne ended up being passed to the House of Orléans, which is the younger brother of Louis XIV. And the Duchess, believe it or not, was actually Queen of France for about 20 minutes. And there were a lot of succession issues that were around her time period. But when she ended up leaving France, she actually left this particular tiara in the vault. Likely because, obviously, those emeralds belonged to the French Crown Jewels. Ergo, it wasn't part of her personal collection. It felt more connected to the history of France in general. So the monarchy ended up being abolished in 1848. And then Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who was the nephew of Napoleon, ended up becoming president shortly after he made himself a lifetime president. And then, of course, what is the next step, guys? It is emperor. He became Emperor of France, yes. And so he and his wife, Empress Eugénie, she liked this tiara and wore it quite frequently. And so she was probably more closely associated with this tiara. They were toppled by another republic. And so the couple ended up going into exile, I believe, if I remember correctly, in 1871, is the date there. And so also as she left France, she also left this tiara behind. And what happened to it is that it was eventually displayed with a couple of other tiaras on our list here at the World's Fair in Paris in 1878. And at the World's Fair, eventually they decided to actually sell this tiara and much of the French crown jewels. And this was done because in their minds, because they were getting away from the monarchy, they obviously had a lot of turmoil because they had a king, a revolution, an emperor, a president, then an emperor again, and then a king again. So, and then a republic. So lots of benowns that we were having there in France. And so they decided that since there was no need, real need for these pieces anymore, that they were going to go ahead and sell it. And obviously you get a pretty chunk of change for royal jewelry, especially these kinds of jewelries. But the problem is, is that you're also losing a piece of the heritage. And what happens with these pieces is that inevitably, yes, you sell them as one piece, but it also is possible that whoever owns or purchases this piece may smash up the jewels, make them smaller, and so that they can sell them in more items. So it's kind of like if you have a big track of land, let's say you have a hundred acres and you decide to sell it to a development. In that hundred acres, you have one great plot of land. Well, they could sit maybe 100, 200 houses on there. And then that plot of land looks very, very different. Yes, you, to a certain extent, make more money, yet you also destroy the integrity of that original piece of land, if that makes sense. So that is what happens with royal jewelry. That's why it's so important to try to keep it as much as possible together. And so what happened is eventually this tiara was sold and ended up in the UK for a period of time. It was actually displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum before eventually being purchased by the Louvre Museum. And so they were able to bring it back and display it once again for us. Okay, next piece is a rather gorgeous piece that has a special connection to the UK, and that is Empress Eugenie's Pearl Tiara. So this was a gift from Louis Napoleon, who, remember, was elected president, established himself as lifetime president, and then made himself emperor. So he gave it to his wife for their wedding and it was made by Alexandre Gabriel Lemoyne. And the jewels came from the collection of Empress Marie Louise and the Duchess of Angleterre. And because of this, they were also from the French crown jewels. And so there were more than 200 pearls and 2,000 diamonds that made up this tiara, and it was actually constructed in silver, so we're no platinum here. And so she wore it throughout her husband's reign and even to a state visit to Windsor Castle. And so like the Emerald Tiara, it was also auctioned off. Again, why? I don't know. I don't know why they, I mean, I understand why they did it, but also my historian brain going, why are you smashing up these pieces, selling them, especially ones that have deep, deep historical value that have maybe been in the country. So this was eventually acquired by the Prince of Thern and Taxus in 1890, which is a German principality, as a wedding gift to his wife, the Archduchess Marguerite Clementia of Austria. And it was probably perhaps most associated with Princess Gloria. And she married her husband, the Prince of Thern and Taxus in 1980, and she became known as Princess TNT. And they lived a rather wild and exorbitant, flashy lifestyle. And this ended up costing them. So when her husband died in 1990, which is actually just 10 years into their marriage, they were $500 million in debt. And yes, they had a fortune in the billions. But again, if you remember from a lot of our conversations, oftentimes a lot of royal wealth is tied up in land, in homes, it's not liquid cash, like say with Elon Musk, where he can just liquidate a bunch of his stock and boom, he has several billion dollars in the bank. That's not how it works with royalty the vast majority of the time. And so it was also sold to, and the tiara was purchased, of course, by the Friends of the Louvre Foundation who purchased it for the museum. And I volunteer myself to become a member. Obviously, you probably have to donate to become a member. And they should have a program where if you donate to the Friends of the Louvre Museum, at some point there is wear a tiara Sunday or something like that, where you can put your hat into a ring. And if you're picked, they take that tiara out for you and you get to wear it. That's what I'm searching for. I wonder who cleans them. Does somebody clean them? I bet you they do. I really want that job. I actually saw somebody cleaning in a museum like dusting and I was like, oh, that's kind of a cool, interesting job. And it was actually in a palace. And so I'm like, now that I'm thinking about it, can I dust in the Louvre Museum and just look at the pretty jewelry? And take it out so I don't have to photograph it through a smudged window with thousands and thousands of other people around. I will say the day I was there was very busy. Apparently Monday is a bad day to go to the Louvre. It was packed. It was just unbelievably packed. Anyways, so last on our list, and this one was a surprise to me because I had seen pictures of this one and I thought it was much bigger. It's very, very tiny. It's very, very small. It would, I have a big head, so it would fit not even on like, so tiaras you think, let's say ear to ear. Let's say that as a general dimension for you. It's about half of that. It would just sit at the very tippy top of your head. It is very small. And that is a Queen Marie Amelie's sapphire tiara. And it also has a set including a necklace, a brooch, and earrings as well. And so the sapphires in this collection may have been owned by Empress Josephine. So this is a wife of obviously Emperor Napoleon. And so these were in possession of her daughter, Hortenes, by 1821. And then inevitably they were purchased by the future French king, the Duke of Orléans, who became Louis-Philippe I, King of France. And so what happened is inevitably somehow, I was reading the court jeweler where I got a lot of this information, couldn't quite follow the series of events, but somehow there were enough sapphires actually to make two different sets. So this is two different sets of tiaras, earrings, necklaces of sapphires. And so the one we're talking about is particularly the Louvre one. And apparently some of the pieces were worn in a photograph of the Queen at one point. But this Louvre set was created and was given to Queen Marie Amelie's grandson Ferdinand Philippe in 1842. And so then inevitably at somewhere down the line, Princess Marie Isabelle inherited this set and she was photographed wearing this tiara. So it stayed in the family for a period of time after that, but inevitably finances kicked in and they did have to sell it. And of course, the Louvre was more than happy to purchase that tiara from them. And as well, I believe it was a bigger tiara set at some point, but they took off some of the sapphires and extra arches in order to make it smaller and utilize those pieces in other things. Because royalty very many times is all about utilizing the jewels to the best of your ability, because these were precious commodities. These were very, very precious commodities. And before we wrap up for today, I did also want to tell you about a giveaway I'm doing on my main channel and this one as well. So you can have two entries if you go to my main channel, Royal News Network, and if you come to this one as well. And it is for the Limitless Bracelet from Anna Lucia Diamonds. These are lab-created diamonds. I've been loving my set, so I'm super excited to have this giveaway here. So how you enter is you must number one, subscribe to this channel. And then if you go down and you, in the comment section, if you create a little diamond emoji in addition to sharing with me what is your favorite royal tiara, because I do want to know, or even royal piece of jewelry, I would be ecstatic to find out. Share that in the comments below. The giveaway ends on October 31st. And so it is limited to this video on the fashion channel. So guys, I hope you really, really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for watching, and I look forward to seeing you again very, very soon. Bye. ♪♪♪