Russia's Lost Amber Room Most Likely Damaged, Unfit for Display - Museum Head

ST.PETERSBURG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th March, 2020) The Amber Room, one of the world's most famous artifacts that went missing from the royal palace near St.Petersburg during World War 2, is most likely damaged by now to the point of being unfit for display, the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum director, Olga Taratynova, told Sputnik.

It was in the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, the summer retreat of the Russian imperial family in the 18th century, where the original room was located. History has it that the splendor was looted and grabbed by the Nazi in 1941. Its whereabouts remain unknown today.

"The room is probably still hidden somewhere, but if it is stored under the ground, we would not be able to put the room's contents together after it was stored in such poor conditions for 75 years. Even before the Nazis looted it from the Catherine Palace, the amber was very fragile and coming off the panels. It is devastating to imagine what these panels could look like now," Taratynova said.

Last June, the lost Amber Room gained a revived attention when a group of treasure hunters claimed to have a lead to it, supposedly inside a hidden tunnel somewhere in Poland's northeast.

However, Taratynova says such claims are a regular occurrence.

"We are used to the stories like the ones that made headlines last summer. The museum is constantly contacted by enthusiasts who claim they know the room's whereabouts. For some obvious reasons, a lot of these claims reappear every spring," she said.

The original 100 square feet room used to be covered in finely crafted ceiling-to-floor panels featuring gemstones, gold, carvings, gilding, mosaic, but most importantly over six tons of amber of hundreds different shades. The Nazi are known to have dismantled the panels and put them on trains to the Koenigsberg Castle in Germany, where they were displayed in 1941. After the Nazi defeat in 1945, the Amber Room's trace vanished and while a few fragments were returned to Russia, most original panels were lost.