Dresden Green Diamond

The Dresden Green is a 41 carat natural green diamond, the largest green diamond known. It is a Type IIa stone with VS1 clarity, and its apple green color is the result of natural radiation exposure within the earth. It is displayed in the Watzdorf Cabinet of the New Green Vault at Dresden's Residenzschloss, part of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

The diamond came from the mines of India, attributed to the Kollur Mine, and was first documented in 1722, when a London news-sheet reported on it in its October 25 to 27 edition. In 1742, Augustus III of Poland, Elector of Saxony, purchased the stone at the Leipzig Fair from a Dutch merchant, and it entered the Green Vault treasury as part of a brilliant set.

In 1768 his grandson Friedrich August III had the Dresden court jeweller Diespach break up an Order of the Golden Fleece setting and rework the diamond into a hat ornament, surrounded by two large diamonds of 6.3 and 19.3 carats and 411 medium and small diamonds, the setting it retains today. After the Second World War the diamond was taken to Moscow for roughly a decade before returning to Dresden. From November 25, 2019 to March 1, 2020 it was on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which meant it was absent from Dresden during the November 2019 burglary of the Historic Green Vault's Jewel Room.