Gina Lollobrigida and her sparkling passion for jewels

Emeralds, diamonds, fabulous and colorful parures: Gina Lollobrigida, the actress who died today in Rome at the age of 95, also had a boundless passion for jewels, a trait shared with Elizabeth Taylor. During the Dolce Vita years, both were frequent visitors to the Bulgari boutique in via Condotti, in Rome, and the actress had been a collector of the maison’s creations, precisely in the 50s and 60s. She loved to wear her jewels even on the set, as happened in “Back in September” and in 1971, on the very day of his visit to a diamond mine in South Africa, a gem of enormous carat was discovered. In 2013, the decision to donate some of her most precious jewels to charity at an auction: “Now my life is sculpture – she said – and a sculptor does not need jewels”. In recent years, however, her legendary jewels had also been the subject of thefts and unpleasant legal affairs.