Free Republic

Fate of Russia's lost art treasure revealed after 60-year cover-up John Ezard, arts correspondent Saturday May 22, 2004 The Guardian (UK) Steven Spielberg would have called it Indiana Jones and the Eighth Wonder, and supplied a happy ending. In a damp cellar, guarded by deadly snakes and senile but savage SS men, the holy grail of Russian art treasures would triumphantly have been liberated. According to evidence disclosed today in Guardian Weekend, the truth is more squalid. Peter the Great's 18th century Amber Room, rated as the world's prime missing art treasure, valued at £150m, perished in the chaos of...

CRAFTED entirely out of amber, gold and precious stones, it was a masterpiece of baroque art and widely regarded as the world?s most important art treasure. When its 565 candles were lit, the famous Amber Room was said to glow a fiery gold. Looted by the Nazis , its whereabouts have been a mystery since the dying days of the Second World War. But now a new German investigation believes it has found where the treasure, worth £120 million today, lies - in abandoned mine workings in the former East Germany. One of the few facts all historians seem to...

In the old times there were two suns above the Earth. Unfortunately one got broken to pieces; the pieces dropped into the ocean that now casts bits of "the solar stone" ashore. People call these pieces amber. It is a nice legend about amber; it slightly reminds of the story of creation, loss and restoration of the famous amber chamber in Tsarskoye Selo. One woman from the Russian city of Rostov was one of the first people who believed that the amber chamber could be restored. What is more, she made first considerable contribution into the reconstruction process. In 1976,...