Last Onassis sells the family jewels

The last living descendant of the Onassis dynasty, once labelled the richest little girl in the world, is selling the family jewels at Christie’s this Wednesday. Athina Onassis (pictured), a 23-year-old showjumper and granddaughter of shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, feels that the jewels she inherited from her mother Christina belong to an era that has passed. The collection includes a pear-shaped 38-carat diamond, expected to fetch £2.2m, and a rare Faberge Buddha. "She's a young girl and she just doesn't wear them," a Christie's expert explained.

Athina's decision to put the jewels up for auction is likely to create further friction between the media-shy heiress and the Greeks who treasure the glamorous memory of her family. Born in France, educated in Switzerland, she now divides her time between Brazil, where she shares a Sao Paulo duplex with her husband Alvaro de Miranda Neto, an Olympic medal-winning showjumper, and Brussels. Her unwillingness to spend time in Greece - though she did harbour ambitions to represent them in the equestrian competition in the Beijing Olympics - is widely resented among those who cherish her family name.

This dispute came to a head when the trustees of the Onassis Foundation refused to allow Athina to become its president on her 21st birthday. The president, Stelios Papadimitriou, remarked at the time: "We are not going to turn the Onassis Foundation over to someone who has no connection with our culture, our religion, our language or our shared experiences, and who never went to college or worked a day in her life."

Last year, Athina provoked further hurt when she failed to hand out the prizes at a horse show she had organised in her mother's memory. Alexis Mantheakis, a former spokesman of the Onassis family, said that "what would make the Greek people happy is if she went to Skorpios every now and then and lit a candle for her mother, grandfather and other relatives who are buried there."