How can a room comprising six tons of amber go missing?

It’s one thing to steal a piece of artwork. But how does one steal an entire room?

Ask the Nazis, or maybe the Red Army. Either way, the Amber Room — a glimmering, opulent Soviet chamber sometimes referred to as the Eighth Wonder of the World — suddenly disappeared at the tail end of World War II. And it hasn’t been seen since.

The Amber Room was first conceived at the turn of the eighteenth century as part of the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin, which was then part of Prussia and home to the Prussian royal family. Andreas Schlüter, the royal court’s chief architect, got the idea when he came across dozens of chests full of rare and extremely expensive amber nuggets in the palace’s cellar, and from there... Read More