The Amber Room Bashny.Net

Amber Room was created by master Gottfried Tussauds for Prussian King Frederick I. In 1717, already by his son, King Frederick William I prepodnёs office to Peter I as a gift. Peter appreciated gift: "I received a present preizryadny ..." - he wrote to his wife Catherine. Amber Room and packed with great caution was taken to St. Petersburg in 1717.

In 1743 Empress Elizabeth asked the master Alexander Martelli under the supervision of chief architect Rastrelli to "fix" the office. And in 1770 under the supervision of Rastrelli's office is transformed into the famous Amber Room of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, significantly increasing in size and luxury. So much so that it is still sometimes referred to as "the eighth wonder of the world».

Sudden changes in temperature, furnace heating and drafts destroyed amber piece. The restoration was carried out in 1833, 1865, 1893-1897, 1933-1935, respectively. Serious restoration was planned for 1941.

At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War museum values ​​of the Catherine Palace were evacuated to Novosibirsk. Amber Chamber decided not to touch because of its fragility, made its preservation in situ. Panels plastered first paper, then gauze and cotton. This was a fatal mistake which has predetermined the tragic fate of the masterpiece, as the Germans, robbed Catherine Palace and Amber Room stolen.

From 1942 to the spring of 1944 it was exhibited for review at the Royal Castle of Konigsberg. In August 1944, as a result of massive raid British aviation was a fire here, but it is believed that the panel is not affected, a room packed and hidden in the dungeons of the castle. Boxes with panels were stored in the cellars of the castle until the beginning of the storming of the city by Soviet troops.





After the assault by Soviet troops Konigsberg in April 1945, the Amber Room had disappeared. Her subsequent fate is still a mystery. The search for the Amber Room, organized immediately after the war, to no avail. At first thought, it burned down in Koenigsberg castle ruins, but from 1946 increasingly began to express the opinion that the Amber Room survived the fire. Many hypotheses have been put forward, where it can be today from Koenigsberg to Coburg, from salt mines in East Germany before the secret vaults and American bank safes. Even assumed that the Amber Room was on the boat sunk Marinesko "Wilhelm Gustloff", or transmitted to the United States by way of reparations cruiser "Prinz Eugen».



Since 1979, Russian specialists specially created "Tsarskoye Selo Amber Workshop" worked on the reconstruction of the missing treasure. The 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg (2003), she recovered in full from the Kaliningrad amber.











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