What a night! On Monday, Roman jewellery house Bvlgari celebrated its 140th anniversary in style: By throwing a dazzling bash on home ground and inviting the most fabulous people to the party. Kicking things off, the brand presented its 150-piece strong Aeterna (“eternal” in Latin) high jewellery collection within the walls of the magnificent Terme di Diocleziano—the largest imperial public baths in ancient Rome that were built from AD 298 to 306, now converted into a unique open air museum under the auspices of the Museo Nazionale Romano.
The presentation encompassed the full range of the brand’s offerings, including High Jewellery and High Jewellery Watches, High-End Bags and, for the first time, Very High-End Fragrances. Of course, it was inspired by Rome’s epithet as the Eternal City, and explored the concept of time and eternity through conceptual ideas, the house’s symbols, and, of course, a profusion of exceptional stones.
Foremost among the creations that were revealed was the Serpenti Aeterna necklace, composed of seven pear-shaped diamond drops cut from the same rough, with their total weight adding up to 140 carats exactly—one for every year Bvlgari has been in existence. “Serpenti Aeterna represents the pinnacle of excellence,” said Bvlgari CEO Jean-Christophe Babin. “It blends the most extraordinary diamonds recently crafted together with Serpenti, the most desired jewellery and watch symbol of the last decades, brought by Cleopatra to Rome in 46 BC and reborn in 1948 thanks to the visionary Bulgari family with the jewellery secret watches.”
Later in the evening, brand ambassadors Anne Hathaway, Priyanka Chopra, Shu Qi, Liu Yifei and Hikari Mori descended upon the museum, walking down the gold carpet and sitting front row alongside Babin and Bvlgari’s longtime Jewellery Creative Director Lucia Silvestri to take in performances by choreographer Sadeck Berrabah and famed ballet dancer Eleonora Abbagnato.
Following which, a star-studded runway lit up the museum’s Chiostro Ludovisi. Icons from the worlds of fashion and film—among them Isabella Rossellini, Carla Bruni, Mariacarla Boscono and Elisabetta Dessy—paraded in the crisp spring night wearing the most stunning pieces from the Aeterna high jewellery collection.
See what went down that night right here: