What Happened to the Most Expensive Royal Jewel Collection in History?

In 1925, workers repairing a palace in Moscow pulled up the boards beneath a staircase and found a hiding place no one had opened for eight years: thirteen tiaras, twenty-five necklaces and hundreds of jewels of the richest family in Russia. It was only one of many.

This is the full story of where the Romanov jewels really went. The jewels the Yusupovs hid and never saw again. The tiara a British friend smuggled out of a palace in the middle of the revolution, which later sat on the head of Queen Elizabeth II for seventy years. The jewel casket of Empress Maria Feodorovna. The crown jewels sold lot by lot in London in 1927. The pearl kokoshnik that passed from an English duchess to Imelda Marcos and now waits in a bank vault in Manila. And the one original Romanov tiara that never left Russia.

Which of these jewels should have come home? Tell us in the comments.

00:00 The hiding place under the stairs
01:07 The richest family in Russia
17:58 Smuggled out of the palace
28:45 The Empress's jewel casket
38:52 Sold by weight. London, 1927
47:19 The only one that survived