The Amber Room: the lost eighth wonder

Imagine walking into a room where every wall glows like honey in candlelight. For two hundred years that room existed. Then it disappeared.

A gift between kings

The panels were made in Prussia, starting in 1701, from tonnes of Baltic amber backed with gold leaf and mirrors. In 1716 the Prussian king Frederick William I gave them to Tsar Peter the Great of Russia. In 1755 the room was installed in the Catherine Palace near St Petersburg, and visitors began to call it the eighth wonder of the world.

Taken in 1941

During the Second World War, German soldiers dismantled the room in a matter of days and sent it to Königsberg Castle, where it was put on display. It was last seen there near the end of the war. Then the trail goes cold.

Still missing

Treasure hunters have searched mines, bunkers, lakes and shipwrecks ever since. Many historians believe it burned with the castle in 1945. Others are still looking.

The room that came back

Russian craftsmen spent more than twenty years rebuilding it from old photographs. The new Amber Room opened in the Catherine Palace in 2003.

You may not have a palace, but a single piece of carved amber holds the same glow. See our amber carvings.