By CLAIRE SHIPMAN, CINDY SMITH and OLIVIA STERNS
It was a chamber fit for a queen. A fairy tale of a room, crafted almost entirely of six tons of glowing, translucent amber.
This lavish chamber, estimated to be worth $150 million today, was born
from the hedonistic desire of Prussian King Frederic the First, for a
room made completely of amber.
In the 300 years since
Frederic built the Amber Room for his home at Charlottenburg Palace, it
has dazzled kings and queens, trading hands between Russian and
Prussian rulers.
During World War II, the Amber Room, dubbed
the "Eighth Wonder of the World," was looted by the Nazis. Today, the
fate of the original Amber Room remains one of Europe's great
mysteries.
Checkered Past
Never fully
completed, the room's honeyed panels were sent to Russian Czar Peter
the Great as a gift in 1716. The Amber Room soon became a gem inside
the Catherine Palace, that rivaled Versailles.
The gesture
sealed the Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden, and over the
centuries, it continued to be transferred back and forth, as a symbol
of friendship between the two empires.
During World War II,
Germany's Third Reich decided that the German-made Amber Room should be
brought back to Germany, as a symbol of German greatness.
"It
was of supreme importance to repatriate this gift, or rescue it from a
subculture they viewed [as] Russia," explained Robert Alexander, author
of "The Romanov Bride."
As the Germans approached, the
terrified Russian curators were unable to dismantle or hide the Amber
Room. The Nazis soon found it, returned it to Germany, and put it on
proud display at Konigsberg Castle.
As the tide of war turned,
and the Germans started losing ground, they grew worried about the
Amber Room's safety, and boxed it up. Except for a few traces, no one
has seen it since.
Unsolved Mystery
Before
he died, the museum director who looked after the Amber Room during the
war assured the people of Berlin that the room had survived heavy
allied bombings, but gave no further clues.
The 65-year
obsession with solving this mystery and finding the remains, has pulled
in everyone from billionaire art lovers to the Stasi (East Germany's
former secret police) to the KGB (the old Soviet Union's security
force).
One conspiracy theory suggests that it is still buried somewhere beneath the castle.
"How would they know the Amber Room was down there, how would they know
its value? They were just coming in to destroy the fascist army," said
Alexander, who suggests that answer could be plausible.
Burned?
Others
say the Amber Room probably simply burned as the Red Army battled back
against the Nazis. Skeptics say the whole city would have smelled the
stench of burning amber, though.
Sunk?
Some
historians say that the boxes were put on a German cruiseliner, which
was sunk by Soviet torpedoes, but multiple dives have yielded no amber.
Hidden?
A recent tip led German
investigators to an abandoned silver mine, south of Berlin, and to the
shores of the Baltic, to dredge a murky lagoon. No luck in either case.
Though the hunt continues, and the mystery remains unsolved, a dazzling re-construction has now been built in its place.
"It
captures the imagination and a certain hope against hope. The Amber
Room is gone and nobody wants to believe that it's gone for good," said
Alexander.
Grandeur Restored
Today, a lavish
replica is open to the public, glowing in gold just like the original
in the Catherine Palace, outside St. Petersburg.
The Russian
government embarked on the painstaking re-construction in 1979, and
finally finished it in 2003, with help from German donations,
re-opening the room for the city's 300th birthday.
Those who visit the new Amber Room say it feels like stepping inside a life-size jewelry box.
There seems to be no end to the spectacular detail, with every inch covered in scallops, garlands and cherubs.
Re-Creating Magic
Many, who believe that amber heals, describe a feeling of light and
heat coming from the walls. In fact, the tsars and tsarinas, and their
guests who spent time in the Amber Room, all swore they felt an energy
field.
A thin layer of gold foil, hanging behind the
translucent amber panels, radiates a golden luminance. The room
sparkles brilliantly in both daylight and candle light, just as it
would have in the 18th century, filled with 500 candles.
Just re-creating these effects was practically a feat of magic.
Thousands
of individual slivers in 20 hues, carved to perfection, including the
monogram of King Frederick the First of Prussia, and the coat of arms
of the Russian Empire, decorate the walls.
To do all this,
craftsmen were retrained in artistic techniques, lost for centuries.
For example, artisans spent 10 years trying to recover the most basic
techniques used in the original constructionn — 230 experiments on just
glues, alone.
They worked from old black and white photographs, analyzing them in terms of shades.

Photographs taken before the war guided the re-construction.
In
the room's centerpiece are copies of four intricate Florentine mosaics
that adorned the walls in extravagant amber frames. One of these is the
original, stolen from the Amber Room crates during the war, discovered
and returned in 2002. The long-laboring artisans were ecstatic to find
their copy almost exactly matched!
One More Mystery
As the Nazis advanced on Russia, the museum workers, charged with protecting the room, failed to do so.
Were they worried the amber was too fragile to move, or did they think it would incur the wrath of Stalin if it stayed?
All we know is that they covered the walls in cotton and paper — a disguise the Nazis quickly saw through.
The
Nazis removed the panels, packed them up and took them away. They had
the technology, the equipment, and all the resources, so they brought
museum experts to Russia to remove the Amber Room in the middle of the
war.
Tourist Attraction
Today, thousands of visitors flock to the palace every year.
The floor, a mix of richly colored wood, inlaid in an intricate
pattern, fit for royalty, needs to be protected, so, visitors to the
museum have to don little booties, similar to those a surgeon wears.
For more about the Amber Room's re-opening, click here.