A Monstrance of Six Thousand Diamonds and a Cloak of Straw

On the ground floor of the front building is the famous Loreta treasure, brought together here mostly by noblewomen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The best known piece is the diamond or sunburst monstrance, the gift of Countess Lidmila Eva of Kolovrat in 1699; it carries six thousand five hundred and eighty diamonds — by other accounts six thousand six hundred and sixty-six, or six thousand two hundred and twenty-two — and a single one of them is worth twenty-five thousand guilders; the precious piece contains twenty-six pounds of gold. Another monstrance has two hundred and sixty diamonds and a great quantity of rare pearls. Among the other treasures a cloak for the figure of the Virgin is shown, given in 1688 by Countess Lidmila Trautmannsdorf: that cloak is made of straw, yet as beautiful as though it were cloth of gold.