Treasures of the Amber Room. The Secret of the Amber Room. The story of the abduction of the "eighth wonder of the world". Adventure room in Russia

Extraordinarily interesting and beautiful is the Amber Room in the Catherine Palace. It is even quite deservedly called a wonder of the world. The appearance of this unique room is covered with myths and legends. And the disappearance of this masterpiece in wartime still excites the imagination. Fortunately, the Amber Room still managed to be restored. In this article, we will tell you in detail about its history, as well as where the Catherine Palace, the Amber Room are located. Ticket prices and museum opening hours can also be found in this article.

Prussian period

The Prussian kings Electors of Brandenburg (and Prussia was considered the famous center of the amber trade in Europe) since 1618, as gifts to other princes, began to traditionally give amber, this is the "gold" of the Baltic Sea, as it was called. Thanks to this, the art of processing this stone developed rapidly, and the Amber Room became one of its peaks. It was created during the heyday of Prussian and German art in general, namely at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Elector Frederick III (reigned 1657-1713) in 1701 undertook the reconstruction of his capital and, in particular, the royal residence - a whole complex of buildings dating back to the 16th-17th centuries. The court architect of the king, I.F. Eozander, made the country estate a real palace, built according to the Versailles model. Today it is known for certain that this architect created the project of the Amber Cabinet. Litzenburg and Oranienburg, two palaces of the King of Prussia, with which the fate of the Amber Room is linked, since 1707 became the place of Eosander's activity. At first, the Amber Room was intended to decorate the Litzenburg Palace. During his lifetime, it was not possible to see this room finished. Work was in 1709 still in full swing. By that time Sophia-Charlotte had died (in 1705). Frederick I decided to stop the project and decorate the gallery in his other palace, Oranienburg, with amber panels. Most likely, the king decided to stop construction in order to preserve the Litzenburg Palace, the residence of his wife, as it was during her lifetime. The walls of the hall, in which it was supposed to install amber panels, were decorated with gold galloon and damask. And today in the Litzenburg Palace you can admire the Red Damask Room. In memory of Queen Sophia Charlotte, this palace became known as Charlottenburg.

Then the king instructed Eozander to enlarge the palace in Oranienburg by adding the Amber Gallery 30 meters long, which was larger than the original project. However, despite active work, this gallery was not completed during the life of Frederick I, who died in 1713.

Gift to Peter I

The Russian emperor was delighted with the work of Eozander and did not hide his desire to have a similar work of art in his country. Friedrich Wilhelm I, heir to the king (years of life - 1688-1740, reign - from 1713), introduced strict discipline in his country, the purpose of which was practical benefit, and decided to stop such expensive work in his father's palaces. But the undisguised admiration of numerous guests prompted him to install amber panels in an office belonging to the main chambers of the Berlin Royal Castle. This was the only confirmed fact that this masterpiece was in Berlin before being sent to the Russian capital, St. Petersburg.

During the life of Frederick I, Peter I personally examined the panels for the Amber Gallery during his visit to Berlin. In November 1716, during a meeting with his son, which took place in order to conclude an alliance between Prussia and Russia, Friedrich Wilhelm I presented the emperor with expensive gifts, among which was the Amber Cabinet. On January 13, 1717, the Amber Room was delivered to St. Petersburg in 18 boxes, which, in addition to finished panels, contained a large number of previously unused fragments.

There is no evidence of where Tsar Peter I planned to install these panels, so assumptions about their intended use in the interior of the Winter Palace remain groundless.

Amber room during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna

In 1743, the emperor's daughter Elizabeth Petrovna, after entering the kingdom, ordered that a gift be placed in a new residence under construction - the Third Winter Palace. The Italian architect A. Martelli was invited to carry out the work. Under the leadership of another great architect, F. B. Rastrelli, already in 1746, the transformed Amber Cabinet appeared in the Winter Palace. However, some elements for the new interior were missing, so Rastrelli decided to install mirrored pilasters and insert additional panels painted "in amber". In 1745, King Frederick II of Prussia presented the Russian Empress with another amber frame designed by A. Reich, which was decorated with motifs and allegories that glorified the greatness of Elizabeth Petrovna. In 1746, the Amber Room began to be used for official receptions, although it was moved from place to place many times during the repeated reconstructions of the Winter Palace.

Amber Room in the Catherine Palace

12 years later, in June 1755, already in Tsarskoye Selo, by decree of the Empress, the Amber Room began to be created under the leadership of Rastrelli (everyone knows where the Catherine Palace is located today). Thus began a new era of glory for this masterpiece in Russia, which lasted about two hundred years.

The palace hall reserved for her was 96 square meters, which significantly exceeded the size of the previous room. Therefore, the panels were placed in the middle tier on three walls and separated by pilasters with mirrors and gilded wood carvings. Where there was a lack of amber, the walls of the hall were covered with canvas and decorated with amber-like paintings, made by the artist I. I. Velsky. Rastrelli brilliantly coped with his task, reinforcing the interior with beautiful bronze lamps, a picturesque ceiling, gilded carvings, mirrors and parquet made of various precious woods.

The center of the ceiling was decorated with a huge painting by an unknown artist from Venice of the 18th century, depicting Wisdom protecting Youth from the temptations of love.

The middle, central tier consisted of 8 vertical panels, of which four contained mosaics of colored stones, made in Florence in the 1750s, figuratively depicting the five basic senses: Hearing, Sight, Touch, Taste and Smell.

The amber office of the Catherine Palace had a luxurious decoration. It was made up of Chinese porcelain and chests of drawers of Russian work. The Amber Room also kept one of the largest collections of amber products in Europe, and over time, a museum of amber things appeared, where there were chess, caskets and checkers.

Personal items of members of the royal family

From the middle of the 18th century, Tsarskoye Selo, where high-class amber processing craftsmen had appeared by that time, began to receive various objects belonging to members of the royal family from the Chamberlain Storeroom for repairs. The documents indicate that in 1765 more than 70 items made of this stone were brought here for repair, among which were religious objects (crucifixes and crosses), furniture (suppliers, cabinets and cabinets) and household items. A special group of things from the time of Elizabeth are table decorations made in the form of a shell shell with acanthus leaves and baroque volute. All of them are decorated with carvings. These products, apparently, decorated the festive table of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna during ceremonial receptions.

Amber room during the time of Catherine II

In 1763, Empress Catherine II issued a decree according to which all canvases painted "in amber look" were to be replaced with real amber mosaics. The grandiose work took 4 years and 450 kilograms of this stone. In 1770 the work was completed.

By decree of Catherine II, who paid great attention to the development of furniture in Russia, the Amber Room was replenished with numerous masterpieces of this craft.

According to the inventory compiled by D. Grigorovich, by the end of the 19th century, the palace had a large amount of furniture, mainly chests of drawers and tables. She was mostly of French descent. Where the place of manufacture was not indicated, most likely it was about Russian products. One of the exhibits, a chest of drawers, is especially interesting. The unusual fate of him and the chest of drawers paired with him is very curious. During the Great Patriotic War, they were left in the palace and taken to Germany by the invaders, and half a century later one of them returned to its original place. Both chests of drawers were recorded in pre-war photographs of the Amber Room, they were also included in the inventory of the museum in 1938-1940. The returned piece of furniture has a marking that matches the numbers from the records of the palace. In the 1990s, a chest of drawers was discovered in Berlin, in a private collection, and bought from its owner on the initiative of the Spiegel magazine, and later, already in 2000, the Amber Room of the Catherine Palace (Pushkin) regained this masterpiece. The chest of drawers, in addition to its interesting fate, is curious in itself, as an example of one of the first experiments in creating furniture in Russia based on samples of French products dating back to the 1760s.

Since strong temperature drops, drafts and destroyed amber, only in the 19th century the restoration of the Amber Room was carried out three times.

Snapshot of the Amber Room

In 1907, the first "autochrome" records were released, having developed a three-color mosaic raster. These were some of the first color images in the history of photography. In 1917, Lukomsky, head of the Artistic and Historical Commission that worked in the palaces, received permission to film in the palaces of Tsarskoye Selo. Including it was planned to shoot in the city of Pushkin, the Catherine Palace, the Amber Room was also supposed to be photographed. This was a necessity for creating catalogs of museum exhibits. The shooting was carried out by A.A. Zeest. The photographs were taken in the Catherine's Palace in June, and in the Alexander Palace - from August 14, 1917, immediately after the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his family were sent to Tobolsk. On October 11, 1917, P.K. Lukomsky received 140 photographs, one of which also captured the Amber Room in the Catherine Palace. Until 1941, it remains the only color image of her.

In 1933-1935, minor restoration works were carried out by the sculptor I. Krestovsky.

Loss of interior

In the summer of 1941, a grandiose restoration of the masterpiece was planned, but the outbreak of World War II prevented its implementation. They wanted to evacuate the amber room, for which the mosaics were sealed with a thin layer of a special one. But the trial removal of the panel showed that the amber was crumbling. It was very important to save the Catherine Palace from looting. The amber room, the price of which was truly enormous, must certainly have been hidden from the invaders. Therefore, it was decided to subject it to conservation on the spot. The panels were sealed with gauze, covered with batting covers and covered with wooden shields.

When the Amber Room (Catherine's Palace, Pushkin) was attacked by German soldiers, among whom was a team of specialists in the export of art treasures, the panel was removed and sent to Koenigsberg.

Here she stayed until the spring of 1945. According to the German newspaper Königsberg Allgemeine Zeitung, on November 13, 1941, art historian Alfred Rohde organized an exhibition of precious stones and some elements of the decoration of the Amber Room (hidden in a safe place) in the Prussian Art Museum. In 1944, when the Germans were retreating, the panels were again taken apart, put into boxes and sent in an unknown direction. Since then, the Amber Room has been lost.

The revival of a masterpiece

In 1979, the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR decided to recreate the amber panels.

In 1983, according to photographs and negatives, the Amber Room in the Catherine Palace began its revival according to the project of the architect A. A. Kedrinsky. In 1994, the first panels were installed in the lower tier, and two years later work on the Vision mosaic was completed. In April 2000, a chest of drawers of Russian work, discovered in Germany, and a mosaic "Touch and Smell", which were part of the decoration of the room, returned to the museum.

In June 2003, in honor of the tercentenary (Catherine's Palace), the Amber Room was opened to the public. The leaders of Russia and Germany took part in the solemn ceremony. The work, which lasted 24 years, was completed. A new period in the history of this grandiose work of art has begun!

Amber Room (Ekaterininsky Palace): where is it located, opening hours

The city of Pushkin, where the museum is located, is located 25 kilometers from St. Petersburg.

Currently, the Catherine Palace (Amber Room) is open daily from 10 am to 5 pm, the only day off is Tuesday, and every last Monday of the month is a sanitary day.

During the summer period, tourist groups and official delegations are serviced from 10 am to 4 pm, and from 4 pm to 5 pm - entrance by tickets for individual visitors. If there are no custom groups, individual visitors can be served at other times. Tickets are not sold in advance, they must be bought at the box office located in the lobby of the palace (Pushkin, Tsarskoe Selo, Catherine Palace).

The Amber Room, which is paid to visit, offers discounts for certain categories of the population. So, the cost of tickets for adults is 400 rubles, and for students, students of Russian universities, as well as pensioners of the Russian Federation and Belarus - 300 rubles. Such ticket prices were set by the Catherine Palace. A tour of the halls (including the Amber Room) is paid separately.

The consequences of the Second World War were not only multi-million casualties, but also the destruction and loss of the greatest historical monuments. Such a priceless loss is the Amber Room, the location of which has not been known since 1945.

Creation of an amber cabinet

King Frederick I, having become the king of Prussia, engaged in an active restructuring of Berlin, special attention was paid to the royal residence, which consisted of a whole complex of buildings of the 16-17th century. The Prussian Queen Sophia-Charlotte dreamed of rebuilding her Litzenburg Palace, and creating the French chic of Versailles in Berlin.

There are two versions of who was the architect of the Amber Room. According to the first, the architect of the amber masterpiece was the German architect Andreas Schlüter, who since 1699 was the chief architect of Prussia. The second version attributes the authorship of the structure to the architect I.F. Eosander. Unfortunately, none of the versions is documented.

The royal couple became interested in amber for the first time after a visit to Koenigsberg, which was famous for its mining of amber, besides, the couple received two large amber frames as a gift. It is possible that the original idea of ​​the amber panels came to the queen's mind and was intended for her Litzenburg Palace, Eosander was responsible for the reconstruction.

In 1701, a Danish amber carver, who was considered the best in Europe, G. Wolfram, was invited to work with amber, but five years later he returned to his homeland due to a conflict with the chief architect. In place of the Dane, two carvers from Danzig were immediately invited, who during 1707-1713 worked on the unique decoration of amber panels.

Unfortunately, the death of the queen in 1709 stopped the work a little, and besides, the king decides not to change the architecture of the palace, in memory of his deceased wife, but to use the amber decoration for the Oranienburg residence.

After the death of Frederick I, work was stopped, and the amber trim was hidden in a warehouse, except for a few panels that they decided to use to decorate the state rooms of the royal palace.

Stay of the amber masterpiece in the Russian Empire

The amber decoration struck the Russian Tsar Peter I during his short stay in Prussia in 1713, the Tsar expressed his delight to the Prussian monarch. In 1716, a Prussian-Russian alliance was concluded, a mutual exchange of gifts took place, one of such gifts for the Russian Tsar was the Amber Room.

In 1718, the gift was delivered to St. Petersburg, and detailed instructions were also attached, which indicated how to unpack and mount the amber masterpiece. It was not Peter I who gave the order to mount the amber cabinet, but his daughter, Empress Elizabeth, who decided to decorate her private quarters with it, remembered the gift.

The architect Francesco Rastrelli was responsible for decorating the imperial chambers, and the Italian Alex Martelli worked with fragile amber. Difficulties in the work of the Italian master arose almost immediately, since there were not enough amber panels, therefore, in order not to spoil the interior, the Italian adds mirrors and paints several panels “under amber”.

Having learned about the problem faced in Russia, the Prussian monarch decides to present the empress with an amber frame, which perfectly complemented the ensemble.

Martelli completed the work in 1746, the empress liked the gallery very much, and it was decided to use it to receive foreign delegations.

Soon Elizaveta Petrovna decides to place the amber room in the palace of Tsarskoye Selo, so the amber panels and furniture are carefully removed and packed into boxes, each of the boxes is manually transferred to a new place.

In the new place, an old problem arises - the allotted gallery exceeded the area of ​​the previous room, so the missing places are covered with canvas and painted by Belsky “under amber”.

Already during the reign of Catherine II, a decision was made to create additional amber panels for empty places, more than four hundred kilograms of amber were brought for this purpose, and finally, by 1770, the amber room takes on its final form.

The amber gallery, striking in its sunny beauty, consisted of many items:

• Amber panels on the walls,
• Pictures in amber frames,
• Caskets and caskets of various sizes, trimmed with amber,
• Florentine mosaics on allegorical themes from semi-precious stones,
• mirror pilasters,
• amber table,
• Chandeliers and candlesticks made of gold decorated with amber stone, etc.

During the time of Catherine's descendants, right up until the revolution, the amber room was supervised by a special caretaker, and restoration work was carried out from time to time.

After the Bolsheviks came to power, the preservation of the amber room was strictly monitored, so in 1933-35 a partial restoration was carried out, and a large-scale restoration of the amber masterpiece was planned for 1941.

Disappearance history

The events of 1941 changed the plans for restoration work, many museum valuables were evacuated to the east of the country, however, they did not dare to transport the amber room because of its fragility, as they were afraid of its destruction, so it was decided to subject it to conservation.

All amber valuables were pasted over with thick paper, covered with gauze and covered with cotton wool, wooden shields were placed on top - it was believed that these measures could protect the valuables from the blast wave during the bombing.

In September 1941, specialists from the Kunstkommission team arrived in the occupied city of Pushkin, who were responsible for historical values ​​in the occupied territories.

The amber decoration was carefully removed and taken to Koenigsberg; in German papers, the amber room is listed as a gift to the Koenigsberg Museum from the Nazi State Administration of Palaces and Gardens.

The received room was not hidden, but rather put in one of the halls of the Königsberg castle, however, the room provided was small, so some of the amber valuables remained packed in boxes.

As a result of a fundamental change in the situation on the military front, in 1945 the Nazi leadership decided to hide the amber panels, the room was again dismantled and carefully packed in boxes, which were taken out in an unknown direction, Hermann Goering followed the shipment.

Amber valuables were packed in a special container, for the manufacture of which galvanized steel, oak boards, asbestos and liquid glass were used. In parallel with these boxes, “tricks” were also made, which, for misinformation, were filled with bricks, glass and small amber.

During the move to Thuringia, one of the trucks was specially destroyed so that everyone could see the spilled amber. It is not known where the real values ​​\u200b\u200bwere taken out, according to the memoirs of the daughter of the German art critic Rode, they tried to take the packed boxes out by rail in January 1945, however, they were never loaded into wagons, since a confirming order from Berlin did not follow.

In addition, the German command understood that the railway, air and sea space was controlled by the enemy. Therefore, Rode, in a letter to the leadership, indicates that it is safer to keep the Amber Room in a reliable bunker, which he subsequently undertook, the entrance to the bunker was carefully disguised.

The castle, in which the Amber Room was located before the disappearance, was occupied by Soviet troops in April 1945, and two days later a fire broke out in the palace.

In the autumn of 1945, during interrogation, Rode, who was arrested by the allied forces, told what the system of underground cities of the SS was, it was there that the stolen valuables were supposedly hidden, he also mentioned the Amber Room. However, the interrogation protocol was lost, and Rode died suddenly under mysterious circumstances, the vault that Rode mentioned was not opened.

Versions of the location of the masterpiece

There is no single opinion about what happened to the amber masterpiece, the main versions are:

1. The room was completely destroyed during a strong fire in Königsberg.
2. The masterpiece is still hidden in one of the East German bunkers.
3. Part of the amber panels that were not on display were taken out by the USSR, and subsequently given to the United States as payment for Lend-Lease deliveries.
4. The boxes with the disassembled amber room were buried on the outskirts of Ass, on the Jutland peninsula.
5. The masterpiece is in secret vaults under the Royal Castle destroyed in 1969.
6. The lost room was secretly transported by allied forces and sold to private collections in the United States, this hypothesis is confirmed by authentic elements of the room discovered during 1994-1997.
7. The collection is in South America with the descendants of Nazi escapees.

Quest for the Amber Room

The search for the missing masterpiece has been going on for more than 70 years. Since 1945, they have been conducted both by lone treasure hunters and representatives of numerous organizations, the USSR stopped official searches only in 1984.

During these 40 years, many hypotheses were put forward, about three hundred places were named for the possible location of the room, however, none of them was confirmed. Also, no evidence was found of the death of the room during the fire.

Immediately after the victory over the Nazis in Koenigsberg, a group of Soviet researchers headed by A. Bryusov began to work, which was engaged in the search for the lost masterpiece. In the walls of the palace destroyed by the bombing, many burnt boxes and fragments of various valuables were found, which suggested the loss of a priceless masterpiece.

However, the researchers came to the conclusion that the Amber Room could not be located here, since the panels contained many metal items, the remains of which were not found. Until the end of the 50s, all the search work of Soviet researchers was classified, and only in 1958 they were made public by submitting an informational article in the Kaliningradskaya Pravda newspaper.

Even more confusion in the search for the room was made by the former Gauleiter of East Prussia, Erich Koch, who, in an interview with journalists, stated that all the amber valuables were hidden in a bunker under the church in Königsberg, however, Koch soon retracted his testimony and stated that the Amber Room was located in Central Germany.

In the 1970s, an article appeared in the German newspaper Die Welt, which stated that boxes with amber panels were transported on the Wilhelm Gustlov liner, however, the liner was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine near Stolpmünde.

A number of expeditions were undertaken at the crash site, during one of them it was discovered that the side of the liner was cut through by autogenous, it was not possible to get inside.

Be that as it may, not one of the many versions about the whereabouts of the lost masterpiece has not been confirmed, as well as refuted.

Amber room of the 21st century

In the 1970s, a decision was made in the USSR to restore the lost masterpiece, and in 1983 preparatory work began. The colossal work was completed in twenty years, the grand opening took place in 2003.

Enormous funds were spent on restoration, so only for the period 1991-1996 about 7 million dollars were spent. Also, two fragments of the original room were returned to Russia - a mosaic created already under Catherine II, and a chest of drawers made of amber, made by Berlin artisans.

The official opening of the restored masterpiece took place in May 2003, the opening was attended by German Chancellor Schroeder. The recreated Amber Room covers an area of ​​10 m2 and is 7.8 meters high.

Colossal forces and means were needed to recreate the amber masterpiece:

• More than $7,500,000 from the Russian budget,
• About $ 3,500,000 sponsorship of the German company RuhrgasAG,
• Six tons of Kaliningrad amber (80% became waste),
• The largest amber nugget in the world, weighing 1 kg, was used in the work.

The main contribution to the restoration work was made by the artists A. Zhuravlev, A. Krylov, B. Igdalov. The resulting masterpiece, according to the reviews of those who saw the original, is many times better than the German original, and modern masters are in no way inferior to the Florentine and German masters of the 17-18th century.

A modern amber masterpiece is on permanent display in the Catherine Palace in the city of Pushkin.

In the summer of 1941, the deceptive peace on the eastern front came to an end. On June 22, Nazi Germany and its allies launched Operation Barbarossa, a large-scale attack on the borders of the Soviet Union, stretching for 2.9 thousand km.

The rivalry between the two totalitarian states promised to become the most terrible war in the history of mankind. It lasted almost four years, and when the war was finally over, Germany suffered a crushing defeat.

But in the fall of 1941, things looked different. The German armies were rapidly advancing deep into the Soviet Union. In a short time, the advanced units of Army Group North were already threatening the country's second largest city - St. Petersburg, which was then called Leningrad.

Soviet soldiers and civilians were desperately trying to strengthen the defense lines around the city in anticipation of the German strike.

The inhabitants of St. Petersburg faced severe trials - a terrible blockade that lasted 872 days. However, the Nazi generals failed to break through the defenses, and the German units did not advance further than the suburbs.

The Catherine Palace was behind the siege line, on the side of the enemy. Once upon a time, members of the royal families spent their summers in a beautiful rococo palace near St. Petersburg, away from the heat and bustle of the city. And in the palace there was a unique treasure - the Amber Room.

The Soviet Union was well aware that when German troops set their sights on St. Petersburg in the fall of 1941, this treasure was also under threat. Museum staff were sent to the palace in advance to dismantle and take out the decor of the room to a safe place. But amber turned out to be brittle and fragile. Rough handling could damage priceless panels.

So the Amber Room was left in place in the Catherine Palace. The walls were just covered with fake wallpaper.

It was a very clumsy attempt to hide one of the world's most famous masterpieces.

The Germans knew exactly what they were looking for when they entered the Catherine Palace. In less than 36 hours, the room was dismantled under the supervision of two experts.

On October 14, a train arrived in the ancient capital of East Prussia, Königsberg, now Kaliningrad. Panel by panel, the Amber Room was unloaded from it and placed in storage in the old city castle. The room was shown by organizing a temporary exhibition, after which it remained in the castle until the very end of the war.

gift to the king

The history of the Amber Room is rooted in Germany, namely Prussia, which at that time was an independent state. The room began to be created in 1701, and for some time it was in the Berlin Palace.

When the Russian Tsar Peter the Great visited the city in 1716, the room made a huge impression on him. The Prussian friends who hosted him decided to give Peter the Amber Room as a gift in order to consolidate the pact concluded against Sweden.

The tsar's daughter Elizabeth chose a place for the room, and German and Russian craftsmen installed it in the summer residence of the royal family - the Catherine Palace.

After a series of reconstructions during the 18th century, the room became larger. The total weight of amber, which was used to trim the wall panels, reached six tons. Decorated with gold leaf and mirrors, the room became known as "the eighth wonder of the world".

Estimates of its current value differ greatly. Some call the figure about 400 million dollars, other experts are sure that the room is priceless.

Trail ends in 1945

After the Germans stole the Amber Room, it was kept in the Königsberg Castle until the last months of the war. But in the spring of 1945, the trail ends.

There are three versions of what could have happened to the masterpiece.

Version 1: the most common hypothesis says that the Amber Room was destroyed during the battles for the city.

At the end of the war, the British Royal Air Force conducted a massive bombardment that caused great damage to the city and its castle. The destruction didn't stop there. In the spring of 1945, the remaining walls of the castle fell under the artillery fire of the Red Army.

There is evidence in the Russian archives that hints that the Red Army found fragments of the Amber Room in the ruins after the Soviet strike. Probably the Soviets wanted to keep this a secret. There were rumors that the communist regime intended to shift the blame for the disappearance (or destruction) of the Amber Room from the Red Army to the Nazis.

But those who go there today in search of treasure will find nothing.

The city ended up on Soviet territory and changed its name to Kaliningrad. In 1968, the head of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, gave the order to raze the area of ​​the old castle to the ground, despite international protests.

Version 2: The Amber Room rests at the bottom of the sea

At the end of January 1945, the dictator of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, gave the order to remove all art objects from Königsberg. As the Red Army advanced and approached ever closer to the city, the henchmen of the Minister of Armaments Albert Speer (Albert Speer) took valuables and art to a safe place.

There are witnesses who claim that they saw with their own eyes how the Amber Room was dismantled and loaded onto the Wilhelm Gustloff liner in Gdynia. The passenger ship carrying refugees from East Prussia left the port on January 30, 1945. On the same day, the liner was fired with torpedoes by a Soviet submarine. Only 1230 people were saved, and more than 9.5 thousand, including 5 thousand children, found their death at the bottom of the sea. Maybe the Amber Room shared their fate?

Version 3: the Nazis managed to hide the treasure.

In 1997, a fragment of the Amber Room was found. A piece of Italian mosaic, an element of its decor, was put up for auction. But he didn't help find the rest of the room. It is assumed that the piece belonged to a German soldier who stole it while transporting the room to Germany.

Despite everything, some believe that the Amber Room still exists.

Perhaps the Nazis managed to hide it, as they did with other looted treasures from all over occupied Europe. There are examples of how the Nazi treasures that became useless were subsequently hunted down. The largest documented cache in the last days of the war was discovered by soldiers of the American General George S. Patton (George S. Patton) in the Merkers salt mine in Thuringia. Among other things, there were seven thousand bags of gold bars, coins and banknotes, as well as countless art objects.

This discovery inspired many to start looking too. Perhaps there are other forgotten caches? Scientists, amateur archaeologists, treasure hunters explored icy alpine lakes, secret vaults, underground bunkers.

In the last year, much has been written about the mythical golden train in Walbrzych. The two Poles said they had obtained evidence using GPR that the train was hidden in a secret underground tunnel. According to amateur researchers, the train is full of gold and documents that the Nazis sought to hide in the final phase of the war.

The experts conducted their own research and refuted the words of the treasure hunters. Excavations were organized in the summer and nothing was found.

Secret room in the bunker

In general, little has changed since the end of the war. Only a few large finds have been made.

But the Amber Room is on everyone's lips again and again.

Some found traces of it in a silver mine, others in a lake or other places. So far, all the alleged hiding places have been empty. But in the summer, two new assumptions arose.

Polish historian Bartlomiej Plebanczyk said that the Amber Room, in his opinion, is stored in an old German bunker near the village of Mameriki. With the help of georadar, he allegedly discovered a secret room there.

"Without a doubt, this room is designed to store treasures," he told the Daily Mail.

Research has begun in the area, but so far there is no news of success.

Last Trace: Underground Aircraft Factory

Last week a message arrived from German Thuringia. 80-year-old treasure hunter Klaus Fritzsche focused on the forests around Walpersberg mountain in search of the Amber Room.

At the end of World War II, the Germans tried to convert the old mines in the area into an underground aircraft factory in order to produce Messerschmitt Me 262 fighters there. The underground tunnels were supposed to protect against bombing, which was a heavy blow to the German military industry. The plant was named Reimahg in honor of the Reichsmarschall and commander of the Luftwaffe Hermann Göring.

A slave labor force - 12,000 people from Italy and Eastern Europe - expanded the existing tunnel system so that it extended 30 km.

On February 21, 1945, the first aircraft took off from the runway at the top of Walpersberg. However, the factory did not start working at full capacity and managed to produce only 20-30 aircraft by the end of the war.

Klaus Fritzsche, a former engineer and entrepreneur, used aerial photographs and documents from the Third Reich to locate the plant.

It is said that the East German communist regime of the GDR has already combed all the mines, but Klaus Fritzsche does not care. He's sure they've been looking in the wrong place before.

According to Fritzsche, spoils of war, such as the Amber Room, could be hidden deep down in the room, which was then protected with dynamite. According to him, there is evidence that the Germans brought a large number of sealed boxes here at the end of the war.

Today, all entrances to the tunnels are closed so that no one gets lost or injured in the dark. But the local authorities gave Fritzsche and his team of volunteers permission to search. The first attempt did not give anything, but the entrepreneur does not even think about giving up.

"If she's there, we'll find her," he told the Daily Mail.

Copy created 24 years

It remains to wait until he finds something. In the meantime, it's hard not to look at his attempts with a grain of salt.

But everyone who wants to look at the Amber Room at least with one eye can go to the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg. There is a copy created from old drawings and black and white photographs.

The implementation of the project took 24 years and cost a huge amount. Another copy, albeit reduced, is available in the city of Kleinmachnow near Berlin.

Video: the secret of the amber room

The new series of the amber detective began with the words "she was found again." And, probably, they will find more than one decade, as it was before and is happening now. Whenever someone claims to know where the Amber Room is, everyone shows interest, realizing in their hearts that this is just another duck. And only cynical newspapermen hint at a complete failure already in headlines like "Homeopath found the Amber Room."

The authors of the latest pseudo-sensation were a trio of elderly German amateur scientists headed by the same homeopath. They claim to be the stolen treasure of the Russian tsars. As evidence, the researchers have a story from a certain reliable source and traces of steel ropes on the trees, which were allegedly left when the cargo was lowered into a cave or bunker.

Konstantin Zalessky, historian: “The first refutation. Firstly, there are a lot of mines in Erzgebirge, a lot of abandoned mines. But it is very inconvenient, very risky to carry from Koenigsberg. The most important objection is different: after the war we were in Saxony, it was the Soviet zone of occupation, and we discovered almost all the treasures - the Dresden Gallery, the Dresden Armory. We discovered all this and took it to Moscow, then Khrushchev returned it. All caches have been found.

Why is there such a race for the gift of the Prussian king Frederick I to Peter, because there are other treasures? Probably, hunters are encouraged by the size. The Amber Room is 52 square meters of panels made of three shades of amber, plus candelabra, mosaics and mirrors. In addition to stone, there are decorations for two tons of gold. In 1941, Wehrmacht soldiers took it from Tsarskoye Selo to the Royal Castle of Königsberg, and in the spring of 1945 the room disappeared without a trace.

Zoya Kostyashova, leading researcher of the Amber Museum, member of the World Amber Council: “From time to time there are reports in the press that the Amber Room should definitely be here, exactly here. And sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Where only people did not look for! We, as employees of the Amber Museum, are somewhat skeptical of such ideas.”

The first state commission to search for a masterpiece was headed by art critic Bryusov. We came to the conclusion that the room burned down. In 1967, they began to search again, the state commission was abolished only in 1984, because the result was zero. The Germans also searched. A special unit was created in the Stasi, which for 15 years futilely dug into the archives and combed the adits in the mountains, the famous Baron Falz-Fein devoted years of his life to searching and promised the finder 500 thousand dollars.

- one of the most famous sights of St. Petersburg. The luxurious hall in the Great Catherine Palace, decorated from floor to ceiling with amber, gold and precious stones, attracts tourists from all over the world. However, not everyone knows that this room is a copy of the one that was once created by Prussian masters, but then disappeared during the Second World War.