Prince Albert - cousin, and the husband of Queen Victoria, the greatest of all the queens of Great Britain, held a world exhibition in London in 1851. It was a stunning success. Two years later, in 1853, one of the most famous diamonds in the world, Kohinoor, was inlaid in the crown of Queen Victoria. A year before that, the diamond received a new cut at the request of Prince Albert himself at the factory of Moses Elias Coster. Take a look at the four houses on your right. On each of them has the inscription “Coster Diamonds”. This is the oldest diamond cutting workshop still in operation today. It was founded in 1840 by Moses Elias Coster. Eight years later, he was succeeded by his son Meyer Moses Coster. It was in Meyer’s time that the ancient diamond of Kohinoor was given a new facet. This work ended the bloody history of the most famous diamond in the world and forever strengthened it in the crown of the British Empire, as a sign of the greatness and glory of the Queen of the United Kingdom of England and Ireland and the Empress of India. Over the years, the Coster factory changed hands and migrated from Waterlooplein Square in the Jewish Quarter to the Museum Quarter. Queen Victoria wore all black until her death as a sign of mourning for Albert, who had died at the age of 42, and Amsterdam continued to live - to live, build, create, expand. Indeed, precisely these features are so characteristic of the city with the short name Dam - the northern brother of Venice and the “grandfather” of St. Petersburg

Photo of British Crown with the Koh-I-Noor Diamond By AlinavdMeulen - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60460554