The amber panels of the room were stolen by the Nazis. Some years ago a project was started to recreate the amber room from old photos. I don’t know if it was completed or not. But actual panels were started using amber found on the beaches of Baltic Sea but it was more difficult as decades of beachcombers had picked up a lot of the precious amber in sight but still there was amber found under the beach sand and rock and in the shallow sea shelf.
For those reading amber is fossilized tree sap and the yellow amber of the Baltics was from prehistoric trees that are extinct so the amber was rare and precious.
It took 40 years for the first amber room to be constructed. Photos of the room show it to be one grand piece of art.
Now from photos and recollections of people alive when it was still in the palace, it is said to have been the most beautiful room ever, that nothing then or since can be compared to it in terms of art and beauty, and intricate artwork sculpted as scenes in relief.
The Nazis sawed off the amber panels from the walls and stole them away to a train never to be found again. It would be interesting if the train that was found in this report contains the fabled amber room panels of the palace.
You should describe a little of the history for those reading as it is highly interesting. It is said to be a piece of art that rivals anything else.
I have to say, based on looking at the photo on Wikipedia, that I do not like the Amber Room. Appreciate the work that went into it, but I could not stand to stay in it for more than 2 minutes. Too much going on there for my taste.
Certainly a good web search would describe the Amber Room to the curious far better than my attempts.
I would guess it was hard to find enough amber and enough artisans to carve it for the modern reproduction.
Would not be surprised if the original is hidden in a secret room in the Kremlin or in one of Putin’s dachas.
You know, the painting in Madrid reminds me of something I heard years ago. One of the reasons Hitler and his bankers launched the Austrian, Czech and then Polish invasions when they did was from running out of foreign exchange currency for their overseas purchases. They seized the cash and gold reserves of every invaded nation and then made the occupied use scrip or Reichmarks. Oil, rubber, tungsten, aluminum,food and so forth had to be procured from somewhere. Besides currency and gold they could peddle artwork to wealthy foreign collectors.