Together with a few other royalty watchers I again (see Catherine the Great conquers Amsterdam) visited the exhibition about Catherine the Great at the Hermitage in Amsterdam.
It is hard to imagine, but this is just a model of the Great Imperial Crown of the Russian Empire, created on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Catherine’s Coronation. It contains 11,352 diamonds (more than tice as many as the original crown), 74 white pearls and a rare ruby-red rubellite. The original crown is on permanent display at the Diamond Fund of the Russian Federation, and was created by the Swiss jeweller Jérémie Pauzié for Catherine’s coronation.