Tag Archives: Amber Room

[caption id="attachment_493" align="alignleft" width="350"]Chambre d’ambre Murs WIKIPEDIA inusite Amber Room by Jeanyvan (Wikipedia Commons)[/caption]

We laughed at Indiana Jones at the time. It’s only a movie, we said, watching Raiders of the Lost Ark. Treasure hunters no longer exist. Archeologists searching for the Ark of the Covenant are pure fiction.

First off, it’s true that some archeologists still hope to get hold of the Ark of the Covenant—unless it was destroyed. They look for it without lassos or guns, but they still look for it.

Second, treasure hunters do indeed exist. And one of the most coveted treasures is the Amber Room. Why? Because six tonnes of rare amber covered the walls. What’s more, the amber panels were backed by gold leaf and mirrors.

Let’s travel back to the time of the Russian tsars. In 1701, a Prussian king ordered construction of the room for the Charlottenberg Palace. In 1716, as a political move, he gave it as a gift to Tsar Peter the Great, who decided to increase the splendor of the room with additional work. Finished in 1755, the Amber Room was moved from the winter palace to the summer palace, near Saint Petersburg.[……]

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