So what is the Amber Room and why is it so important? Amber Room (Figure 1) is a chamber located in the …show more content…
Petersburg as a part of a European art collection. In 1755 Tsaritsa Elizaveta decided to move the Amber Room to the Catherine Palace, the summer residence of the Russian tsars. Italian architect Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli redesigned the room to fit it into a new larger space. The Amber Room was used as a private meditation chamber for Tsaritsa Elizaveta, a gathering room for Catherine the Great and a trophy space for the amber aficionado Alexander II. As a result, the Amber Room has become largely engrained in the Russian history and cultural heritage. In 1917 Catherine Palace became part of the state museum, before the Nazi plundered it during WWII. The Amber Room was last seen in Catherine Palace in May, 1941 as Nazi troops reached St. Petersburg. On the day of the invasion the order came to evacuate St. Petersburg which is a treasure trove of the arts in Russia. The State Hermitage Museum housed 2.5 million artworks with hundreds of thousands more located in Alexander, Catherine, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Oranienbaum and Gatchina