The Nine Provinces Tiara is a versatile tiara belonging to the Belgian Royal Family.
The tiara was a wedding gift to Princess Astrid of Sweden when she married the future King Leopold III of Belgium. The tiara was made in 1926 by a Belgian jeweller named Van Bever and was a gift on behalf of the Belgian people.
It was originally a meander bandeau topped with large diamonds on spikes and it could be worn with or without the spikes. Astrid later added interlocking diamond arches and this is setting is the one that is now mostly worn.
Following Astrid’s untimely death, her husband inherited the piece. His second wife, the Princess of Rethy, only ever wore various components of the piece. The future Queen Fabiola chose to wear the full tiara on her wedding day, as a tribute to her late mother-in-law.
Fabiola passed the tiara to her sister-in-law following the death of King Baudouin in 1993. She wore it until the abdication of her husband in 2013 in favour of their son, King Philippe.
The new Queen Mathilde wore the tiara in her first official portrait as Queen, although she did not wear the full tiara.1
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