The Amber Room

The most fantastically beautiful use of Amber in history was the creation of "The Amber Room" in Catherine the Great's Russian Palace. Imagine if you can an entire room decorated with panels of cut amber, gold, Venetian mirrors, Florentine mociacs worked in Amber, wood and mother-of-pearl inlay floors--all of it lit by candlelight. It was described as the "Eighth Wonder of the World." Please click here to see a picture of The Amber Room before World War II.

Unfortunately, the original Amber Room was pillaged by Nazis in 1941, and the crates and boxes that held its pieces mysteriously disappeared and were probably destroyed in a fire at the end of the war. But there is good news: The Amber Room reconstruction was commissioned in 1979, began in 1982, and was completed in 2003.

The room was actually created in Prussia for King Frederick I originally for the royal palace at Charlottenburg. But by the time the Amber panels were finished in 1711, the plan changed, and The Amber Room was installed in the smoking room in the royal palace in Berlin. Then in 1716, King Frederick's son, Frederick William I, forged an alliance with Russian Czar Peter I against the Swedish King, Charles XIII. To celebrate the agreement, Frederick William gave Peter The Amber Room. It was packed into 18 crates and carried by horse and wagon to St. Petersburg in April 1717. Then in 1755, Empress Elisabeth I had the Amber panels moved to the beautiful Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo. More Amber was cut to fill the larger room there, and in 1763 The Amber Room was complete.