Queen Mary Dazzles in Incredible Heirloom Diamonds at Amalienborg Palace

While our attention was focused on Luxembourg last week, the King and Queen of Denmark hosted a diplomatic dinner in Copenhagen—with some truly dazzling royal diamonds brought out for the occasion.

On Wednesday, King Frederik X and Queen Mary of Denmark hosted a dinner at Amalienborg in Copenhagen for a range of prominent European Union politicians and dignitaries. The group was in town for an informal one-day summit focused on strengthening Europe’s common defense.

There were numerous familiar faces among the heads of state and government in attendance at the dinner, which was held on the night before the summit. One of them was particularly familiar to us: Prince Albert II of Monaco.

For the dinner, Queen Mary wore an appropriately modern take on traditional gala evening wear, pairing an ivory blouse and trousers with a long black coat.

Mary could have opted to accessorize with sleek, modern jewels, but delightfully, she decided to do the opposite, wearing a fabulous pair of antique diamond earrings and an antique diamond brooch from the family vaults.

Both the brooch and the earrings are part of the Danish Royal Property Trust, a collection established in 1910 by King Frederik VIII and Queen Lovisa, with the object of preserving jewelry in the family collection and passing it from monarch to monarch. Because the jewels are such grand historical pieces, their use is generally restricted to the woman who holds the title of Queen of Denmark.

Here’s a closer look at the spectacular diamond earrings, which are set with round brilliants and pear-shaped pendants. The earrings, remarkably, date to the eighteenth century. They originally belonged to Princess Anne of Orange (1709-1759), the eldest daughter of King George II of Great Britain. Anne’s great-great-great-granddaughter, Queen Lovisa, brought the earrings with her to Denmark more than a century after Anne’s death.

Queen Mary has worn the earrings a handful of times since her husband’s accession in January 2024. She brought them out for the Icelandic state banquet in October 2024 and wore them again during the New Year celebrations in Copenhagen in January 2025.

The brooch that Mary pinned to her coat for the EU dinner also has a fabulous, fascinating royal provenance. Made in the nineteenth century, it belonged to Hereditary Princess Caroline of Denmark, the eldest daughter of King Frederik VI. Caroline was barred by law from inheriting the throne because she was a woman, and it was arranged for her to marry a first cousin, Hereditary Prince Ferdinand, in hopes that she would one day become queen consort. But Ferdinand died before he could become king, and with no children of their own, Caroline was left as a widowed princess on the periphery of court life.

But Hereditary Princess Caroline still possessed some magnificent jewels. Among them was a diamond brooch with a long pendant designed to resemble ivy leaves. The Danish court describes it as a “large brooch [that] consists of a recumbent oval with a rosette and, in it, a large diamond encircled by ten smaller diamonds as well as diamond-adorned swirls,” adding, “From the oval hangs a long, detachable pendant, shaped as a branch of ivy with seven large diamonds in old silver covers and, in between them, six ivy leaves decorated with diamonds.”

The pendant can be detached and worn separately as a pendant on other pieces of jewelry, and the entire piece can also, per the website, be worn as a bracelet. After Caroline’s death in 1881, the brooch was purchased by Queen Lovisa, who added it to the Danish Royal Property Trust three decades later.

The brooch can be worn as a complete piece, as Queen Ingrid of Denmark does in this photograph, or without the long ivy pendant. You’ll note that, in this picture, Ingrid is also wearing the same diamond earrings worn by Queen Mary for the EU dinner.

Here, Mary’s mother-in-law, Queen Margrethe, wears the earrings and brooch together at the wedding of Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia of Sweden in June 2015.

So far, Queen Mary has only worn the top section of the Ivy Brooch. She brought it out of the vaults for the first time during the Egyptian state visit in December 2024, and she wore it again during a poignant service commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in January 2025.

Here’s one more look at Mary wearing the earrings and the brooch for the EU dinner last week. She wore rings on both hands for the occasion as well. Instead of wearing her ruby and diamond engagement ring, she opted for stacked diamond bands on her left hand.