Note: Presented via Zoom as part of the Smithsonian Associates program.

Buried for nearly 400 years beneath London, the Cheapside Hoard was discovered by accident in 1912 during an excavation. This collection of nearly 500 jewels and precious objects, likely hidden during the 17th-century Great Fire or Civil Wars, reveals the wealth and influence of Tudor and Stuart England. Probably the stock of a goldsmith in Cheapside, the hoard showcases London’s role as a global marketplace, with items from both the Old and New Worlds. It is the largest surviving collection from that era.

Tudor scholar and historian Carol Ann Lloyd-Stanger examines the story of this collection of luxury items and what they reveal about life in Renaissance England. She discusses the links between specific pieces of jewelry and similar items in well-known portraits and considers how the jewels, scent bottles, and salt cellars open a window into how royals and nobility in the 16th and 17th century used such items to communicate power. She also traces the double mystery of the collection’s disappearance in the 17th century and the reasons this Aladdin’s cave of treasures is still mostly unknown today.