Prague

Fake jewels: Curators at the Czech Republic’s National Museum have decided to recheck the provenance of every one of its 20 million artefacts after discovering that several of the diamonds, rubies, sapphires and other precious stones in its collection are cheap imitations. This painstaking process is expected to take two years. Curators uncovered the truth about the gems while conducting a full inventory of the museum on Prague’s Wenceslas Square ahead of its grand reopening in October, following a seven-year refurbishment. One of the fake stones is a diamond that had been a prize of the collection, but which turns out to be made of glass. Museum officials are now trying to establish whether the curators who acquired the stones in the 1960s and 1970s were duped, or dishonest; or whether genuine stones have been quietly stolen and replaced with fakes over the decades.