TL;DR
The Wittelsbach-Graff is a 31.06-carat fancy deep blue diamond that spent centuries in the crown jewels of Bavaria, vanished from a 1931 auction after being swapped for blue glass, and resurfaced in Belgium decades later. In December 2008 Laurence Graff bought it at Christie's for £16.4 million — then a world auction record for a diamond — and had it recut from 35.56 carats, a decision that made it internally flawless and ignited one of the fiercest arguments in modern gemology.
Some diamonds are famous for size, others for price. The Wittelsbach-Graff is famous for something rarer: it has lived three lives — a royal jewel, a missing treasure, and then, after one of the most controversial decisions in gem history, a near-perfect blue diamond that some experts say was improved and others say was destroyed.
A Royal Dowry — or a Story Too Good to Check?
According to the story long told about the stone, it began its European life in 1664, when Philip IV of Spain gave it to his daughter, the Infanta Margarita Teresa, as part of her dowry on her engagement to Leopold I of Austria. The Smithsonian Institution's account repeats that traditional telling.
Modern research urges caution: a study published in Gems & Gemology in 2008 found no evidence for the 1664 purchase, and the stone's first firm appearance comes decades later, already in Vienna. What is not in doubt is where it went next. In 1722, Maria Amalia of Austria married Charles Albert of Bavaria, a member of the House of Wittelsbach, and the diamond entered the Bavarian collection — which is how it got its name, Der Blaue Wittelsbacher, the Blue Wittelsbacher. It was later mounted on the Elector's insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and when Maximilian IV Joseph became the first King of Bavaria in 1806, it sat prominently in his crown. It stayed with the crown jewels until 1918, and was last seen in public at the funeral of Ludwig III of Bavaria in 1921.
The Diamond That Was Swapped for Glass
After the First World War, Bavaria was a republic and the Wittelsbach family was in straitened circumstances. In 1931, during the Great Depression, the family tried to sell the diamond at Christie's in London. What happened next has never been fully explained: as the Smithsonian recounts, it disappeared before the auction and was replaced by a worthless piece of blue cut glass.
For twenty years, one of the world's great blue diamonds was simply gone. In 1951 the real stone resurfaced in Belgium, and in 1958 it was displayed — without attribution — at the World's Fair in Brussels, an unidentified large blue diamond nobody recognised. Its identity was only restored in 1962, when the Belgian jeweller Joseph Komkommer was asked to recut it, recognised its historical significance, and refused, instead helping assemble a group of dealers to buy it. The diamond then passed into a private collection, where it remained for more than four decades.
The Night It Broke the World Record
On 10 December 2008, Christie's offered the Wittelsbach diamond in London as a 35.56-carat fancy deep greyish-blue stone with VS2 clarity. London jeweller Laurence Graff won it for £16,393,250 — $24,311,190 at the time. Christie's own sale report called it a world record price for any diamond sold at auction, topping the previous record of $16.5 million set by a 100-carat stone in Geneva in 1995. Even in the depths of the financial crisis, the rarest blue diamonds were recession-proof.
Graff had not bought a flawless stone: after more than 350 years of resetting, it carried chips, scratches and bruises. He saw the chance to make it perfect. What he did next split the gem world in two.
Why Are Blue Diamonds So Expensive?
Blue diamonds owe their colour to boron, a trace element trapped in the crystal as it formed deep in the Earth, while most diamonds contain nitrogen instead. Stones with almost no nitrogen and a touch of boron are classified as Type IIb — among the rarest of all diamonds — and the Wittelsbach-Graff is one of them, as GIA's research on natural-colour blue diamonds explains. The Smithsonian notes that after recutting, the stone achieved the top certification of internally flawless, Type IIb, fancy deep blue, and the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) described it as the largest flawless or internally flawless, fancy deep blue, natural-colour diamond it had graded to date.
The Cut That Divided the Gem World
Graff employed three cutters to repolish the stone, removing damage to the girdle and enhancing its colour. The work took the diamond from 35.56 carats down to 31.06 carats — a loss of more than 4.4 carats — and renamed it the Wittelsbach-Graff. Its GIA grade improved on both counts that matter: colour rose from fancy deep greyish-blue to fancy deep blue, and clarity from VS2 to internally flawless.
The reaction was immediate and furious. The celebrated cutter Gabriel Tolkowsky called the recut "the end of culture." Hans Ottomeyer, director of the German Historical Museum in Berlin, compared it to overpainting a Rembrandt, and the American gem cutter Scott Sucher argued that every nick, chip and scratch carried a story, even one that could no longer be deciphered. Sotheby's specialist Daniela Mascetti made the opposite case for provenance: with the Wittelsbach, you know who wore it and what upheavals it lived through, and that knowledge is part of what the stone is.
Graff's answer was unapologetic. "I decided that to create beauty, or acts of beauty, is not a sin," he said. "All we did was remove the blemishes and now it's true perfection." His house stressed that great care was taken to retain the stone's original features, including its unusual antique oval stellar brilliant cut, with 82 facets in an atypical pattern.
Two Blue Diamonds, Side by Side at Last
In January 2010, the recut Wittelsbach-Graff went on public display for the first time in more than fifty years, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., alongside the 45.52-carat Hope Diamond. Romantics had long wondered whether the two great blue diamonds had come from the same Indian mine — the Kollur mines of Golconda — or even the same rough crystal. Smithsonian scientists tested the question while the stone was in their care, and the verdict, reported by Lang Antiques' research summary, was clear: despite their similarities, the two diamonds did not originate from the same crystal, though both formed under similar geological conditions in India.
The exhibition ran from 28 January to 1 August 2010. For six months, visitors could stand between the two most famous blue diamonds in the world and judge for themselves: was the Wittelsbach-Graff a rescued masterpiece, or a piece of history polished away?
Where Is the Wittelsbach-Graff Now?
In June 2011, Graff reportedly sold the diamond to the former Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, for at least $80 million — a private sale, never officially confirmed in full. It has not been seen in public since its Smithsonian appearance, and that absence is part of its mystique. The Wittelsbach-Graff began as a royal jewel, survived a glass swap and a decades-long disappearance, broke a world record, and then became the centre of an argument about whether perfection is worth the price of history. Whichever side you take, it is no ordinary diamond.
For more stories of the world's most extraordinary stones, explore Lumière Gems, where every gemstone carries a history worth knowing.