RUSSIA ~The Catherine Palace interiors~

Wonderful view of "The Amber Chamber" a room with many mysteries...that made it to be the basis for the plot of several movies and books... the creating of this room must have been an enormous undertaking... it was made of several tons of the gemstone, amber...and it disappeared during WWII???
(RU-1612696)Thanks Julia!!

Fifth Issue of definitives of Russian Federation - Bear and Elk
(Issued 29-08-2008)

The Amber Room in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg is a complete chamber decoration of amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors.

It was a gift to Peter the Great in 1716 celebrating peace between Russia and Prussia.The Room was shipped to Russia in 18 large boxes and installed in the Winter House in St. Petersburg as a part of a European art collection. In 1755, Czarina Elizabeth ordered the room to be moved to the Catherine Palace in Pushkin. Italian designer Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli redesigned the room to fit into its new, larger space using additional amber shipped from Berlin.

The room's fate became anything but peaceful: Nazis looted it during World War II, and in the final months of the war, the amber panels, which had been packed away in crates, disappeared. A replica was completed in 2003, but the contents of the original, dubbed "the Eighth Wonder of the World," have remained missing for decades.