Famous European Crowns

on this channel i talk a lot about famous monarchies from world history i talk about emperors kings queens etc but today i'm going to talk about the crowns themselves as in the physical objects that are worn on the head of a monarch i did a video on this topic previously but i didn't really go into the details and history of each crown so that's what i'm going to do in this video for the sake of time i've limited myself to 10 famous european crowns if you're interested in me doing a similar video for other parts of the world let me know in the comments [Music] so i've chosen 10 crowns most of which still exist today and i tried to get at least one crown from every major region of europe i'm going to go through them in reverse chronological order meaning that i'll be looking at the most recently created crown first and the oldest crown last so let's begin the first crown we're going to look at is one you might recognize this is the imperial state crown of the united kingdom and it's the one that the queen wears on special occasions such as when she gives her speech at the opening of parliament however the first thing you need to know about this crown is that it is not the official coronation crown nor is it the crown you see on british heraldry the uk actually has two major crowns there is saint edward's crown which is only ever used for coronations that's the one you see on the coat of arms of the uk as well as on several other coats of arms such as canada's but it's actually the uk's second major crown the imperial state crown that you see more often so that's the one i'm going to talk about whereas the coronation crown weighs about 5 pounds this one weighs about half that amount it comes in at 2.3 pounds so a bit easier to wear on the head but just because it's lighter that doesn't mean it's any less fancy whereas saint edward's crown has 444 gemstones on it the imperial state crown has over six times that amount in total it is covered in 2868 diamonds 17 sapphires 11 emeralds and hundreds of pearls so how much is it worth well no one has been able to put a precise figure on it but the estimates i've seen put it somewhere around 2 billion us dollars but interestingly much of that value comes from a single stone this huge 317 carat diamond in the front known as the cullinan ii this diamond is sometimes confused with the coenor diamond but it's actually a totally different stone the coinor diamond is actually on the crown previously used by queen elizabeth's mother but this diamond the one on the imperial state crown was cut from the largest gem quality diamond ever found which is called the cullinan diamond it was found in 1905 in south africa and was then cut into nine main stones the largest the cullinan one is set in the scepter used by the british monarch the second largest as i already mentioned is the one on the imperial state crown colonies three and four are part of a brooch sometimes worn by the queen and the remaining stones have all been made into various other pieces of jewelry used by the queen as well you'll notice that i've dated this crown to 1838 obviously the british monarchy is much older than that the thing is the various crowns used by the british monarchs over the centuries have been made and remade many times so the current one only goes back to the time of queen victoria but it does have some components that are much older most importantly it contains the saint edwards sapphire which is located at the top and is said to have been in the coronation ring of king edward the confessor one of the last anglo-saxon kings before the norman conquest also directly above the cullinan diamond is the black princess ruby which ironically is not a ruby it's actually a spindle but it's the largest uncut spindle in the world it dates back to 1367 and is named after edward the black prince son of king edward iii you'll notice that it has a little hole in it in which has been placed another stone i've heard that the reason for this is that at some point a hole was drilled into the larger stone so that a feather could be placed in it finally you'll notice that i said that this crown goes back to 1838 but i also said that the cullinan diamond wasn't found until 1905. so what gives well originally a stone called the stuart sapphire was located on the front where the cullinan 2 now sits the stuart sapphire was owned by james ii and then ended up in the possession of the various stuart claimants to the throne after the house of hanover took over but in 1807 king george iii purchased the stone and thus it ended up back in the crown jewels kind of a symbolic move it's actually still on the crown but it's been moved around to the back okay the next crown we're going to look at is the corona tubular from spain and straight away you've probably noticed the word corona one of the most talked about words this year well take note that corona is simply the latin word for crown coronaviruses get their name from the fact that they have these little bits sticking out that kind of look like a crown here the phrase corona tumular simply means burial crown and this is because this crown was made for the funeral of elizabeth farnese wife of the first bourbon king of spain philip v you'll notice that this crown is very different from all the other crowns that we are going to look at in that it's extremely simple it has various heraldry around the bottom but there are no gemstones on it and it's not even made of solid gold it's actually just gold-plated silver this is because in spain there is a long tradition of simply proclaiming kings instead of actually crowning them for instance you will never see a photo of the current king felipe vi wearing this crown on the day that he became king it was sitting there near him as a symbol but it never once was put on his head it just goes to show that different countries understand the idea of monarchy in different ways and have different customs surrounding it the next crown the imperial crown of russia is quite the opposite to the spanish one what you see here is a replica but the real one does still exist even though the russian empire of course no longer exists if you're ever in moscow you can go see it at the kremlin armory museum this crown was made in 1762 for the coronation of catherine the great previous to this most of the russian czars such as peter the great were crowned with monomock's cap a much older crown which may have had mongol origins it too still exists and can also be seen at the kremlin armory back to the newer crown though it is made out of a whopping 4936 diamonds and at the top is a red spinel thought to be the second largest spindle in the world the largest being the black princess ruby which we saw earlier now one of the most notable things about this crown is that it has what's called a miter shape a shape usually associated with bishops and which consists of two flaps joined together at the bottom this differs from the typical european crown shape which usually consists of a bottom hoop topped with several half arches that join together in the middle like the first two that we looked at but russia was not the only country to have a crown like this the former empire of austria had a miter shaped crown as well the next several crowns we're going to look at all have the more typical shape this one is the crown of eric the 14th and it is to this day the official crown of sweden but nowadays like in spain it is not actually ever placed on the head of the monarch even on coronation day it has however been in use since 1561 when it was made of course for king eric the 14th this makes it the oldest of the various scandinavian crowns denmark actually has two main crowns that date to 1596 and 1671 and norway's crown dates to 1818 i'll use the swedish crown as an example to point out another feature common to most european crowns the globus crusager also known as the orb and cross the cross of course is a symbol for jesus and the orb as you can probably guess represents the earth so taken together the pair symbolizes jesus's authority over the world which is then given to the king or queen it is very common in medieval and early modern paintings to see a king or queen holding an orb and cross in their hand or wearing it on their crown next up is the crown of saint wenceslas from the now defunct kingdom of bohemia in what is today the czech republic this crown goes all the way back to 1346 and is named after the 10th century czech monarch duke wenceslaus the first about whom the christmas carol good king wenceslaus is written you'll notice that this crown looks somewhat clumsy compared to modern standards but this is just a testimony to its age nowadays precious stones are always faceted meaning that they are cut in such a way so that the light bounces around inside of them and makes them sparkle these stones were polished but are basically still in their raw state but look how huge they are in total there are 45 redstones although only one is an actual ruby the others are all spindles and there are 30 emeralds those are the green ones and 19 sapphires sapphires are usually blue there's an interesting legend about this crown that says that anyone who places it on their head without being the rightful monarch will die within a year supposedly one of the nazi leaders who governed bohemia during world war ii secretly crowned himself and because of this ended up being assassinated the following year this crown is also interesting because although it still exists very few people know its exact location it is locked in a secret vault within the saint vitus cathedral in prague and seven different people have seven different keys needed to access it we now come to one of only two crowns on this list that no longer exist this is a replica of the crown of bullslaw the brave which was the crown of the kingdom of poland it dates to around the same time period as the bohemian crown we just looked at but unfortunately when poland was partitioned in 1795 the crown was taken by the prussians and melted down but since for many centuries this crown was one of the oldest and most important physical crowns in europe i decided to include it on the list you can see it in many paintings of polish kings i'll also take this opportunity to point out a feature that is found on almost all european crowns the fleur de lis this symbol is thought to have originated with the franks who were the first to build an empire in western europe after the fall of rome and to this day they are generally associated with france however most other european countries use them as well as a more general symbol of royalty and in fact it has also found its way to other parts of the globe as well for example tonga an independent island kingdom in the middle of the pacific ocean which was never colonized by france chose to put the fleur-de-lis on its crown okay here is a crown that looks very different from all the other crowns we have looked at so far that's because although it's the crown of hungary it was likely made in constantinople and is certainly of a very typical byzantine style one of the features that stands out are the hanging pendants called pandelia these are very common on byzantine crowns and can be seen in most depictions of byzantine emperors in fact there is a depiction of a byzantine emperor on the holy crown of hungary itself on the back there is an image of emperor michael vii but there's also an image of a hungarian king to the right of the emperor is king gezza the first the reason these two monarchs appear on the crown is that the crown was made under the direction of the byzantine emperor michael vii and then presented to the hungarian king geza the first this all occurred around the year 1075. originally the crown was only comprised of the bottom circle which is known as the greek crown the arches known as the latin crown were added later during the reign of bella iii in total there are 19 images on the crown all made from enamel in addition to the two monarchs already mentioned also depicted is jesus as well as several important saints but perhaps the feature that stands out the most on this crown is the crooked cross on the top according to one story the cross was knocked crooked when the crown was closed in a heavy iron box and it's been crooked ever since nowadays the crown sits in the hungarian parliament building where it is on permanent display all right we now come to the crown which for many centuries was the most important crown in europe the imperial crown of the holy roman empire the imperial crown likely goes all the way back to the person who is generally considered to be the first true holy roman emperor otto the great he was crowned in the year 962 and it's amazing that well over a thousand years later this very historic crown still exists even though the empire does not it is currently located in vienna where it is housed in the residence of the president of austria but for many centuries this was the crown that was likely used whenever the german king was crowned by the pope and declared to be emperor this was the custom all the way from otto the great to charles v after charles v the pope no longer actually crowned the emperor but instead the imperial crown was considered to be obtained immediately whenever a new german king was quote unquote elected the imperial crown is unique in that it has an octagon shape rather than a typical circle shape this is because it is made up of eight flat plates hinged together four of these plates have enamel images depicted are king david king solomon king hezekiah and of course jesus there's also a huge cross on the front of the crown and a single arch that runs from the front to the back you'll notice that the overall color is a very deep yellow almost orange in appearance this is because it's made of 22 karat gold which is almost pure unlike the 14 karat gold common in western jewelry today like the bohemian crown none of the stones are faceted they are however quite large there are 144 in total including sapphires emeralds and amethysts but one of these stones is not an original here in the front where there is now a heart-shaped sapphire there used to be a stone called the orphan and it used to be one of the most notable features of the crown due to its uniqueness and beauty it is thought that it might have been a really large opal opals are known for their really interesting light play they can often look as if they are shining on their own when exactly the stone disappeared and why we don't know but it's definitely no longer there okay here is another crown that sadly no longer exists if it did it would definitely be one of the most important artifacts from european history this one was called the crown of charlemagne but please note that although it was in fact older than the imperial crown of the holy roman empire it was not actually the crown that was placed on the head of charlemagne it was likely created for his grandson charles the bald in 875 at least the four plates forming the bottom hoop were the fleur-de-lis were added a few centuries later but this was the crown that was used to crown most of the kings of france up until the french revolution at that point the crown of charlemagne along with many other french crowns and items that were part of the royal regalia were stolen in the chaos of the revolution and it's likely that at that time they were taken apart and melted down never to be seen of again the only pre-revolution french crown that survived was a crown made for louis xv of course napoleon was crowned emperor of the french after the revolution so his crown still exists to this day this brings us to the final crown on our list today and the oldest european crown that still exists the iron crown of lombardy it's impossible to get an exact date for when this crown was made but it is thought to date to around the year 628 ce although it could be even older either way this brings us fairly close to the fall of the western roman empire by 628 much of italy was ruled by a former barbarian tribe known as the lombards it was the lombards who were then defeated by charlemagne who then ended up being the first person to be crowned emperor in the west since the fall of rome in addition to being king of the franks and emperor of the franks charlemagne was also the king of italy therefore this crown is actually the true crown of charlemagne it's the only crown that still exists that would have been placed on his head so let me tell you a little more about it first of all the name is based on a legend which states that the inner band that holds the crown together was made from one of the nails from the cross of jesus that nail was supposedly made of iron however testing has shown that the inner band is actually made of silver and that no part of the crown is actually iron you can see that the crown is made of six panels held together with hinges each panel is made of 85 gold and is overlaid with both enamel designs and gemstones in total there are 22 gems seven blue sapphires seven red garnets four purple amethysts and four green stones made simply from glass notice that unlike most later crowns there are no arches or top piece it's simply a circle and in fact it's a pretty small circle having a diameter of around 48 centimeters this means that it would not actually fit on an average person's head if you're ever in milan italy you can go see this very old and very important crown it's located in the nearby city of monza at the monza cathedral okay so that was a look at some of the most famous crowns from europe if you're interested in jewelry and in particular vintage or antique jewelry i'd like to point out that my wife charlotte actually has her own youtube channel now that focuses on this very topic and i'll leave a link to one of her videos on the screen right now thanks for watching you

Channel: UsefulCharts

Views: 567,425

Rating: 4.9097805 out of 5

Keywords: most famous crowns, oldest crowns

Id: 0NPjSy2HWeY

Length: 23min 48sec (1428 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020