hello out there, the amber room is most likely lost. however, its disappearance has little to do with the 'siege of leningrad', as it was in the castle of kalinigrad, then koenigsberg, which until 1945 was a german city. during the war it had been packed in crates and had been stored in the cellars of the castle, from where it was to be removed once the soviet army was approaching. there are many conflicting accounts of what happened, several eye-witnesses saw the crates burn away in the courtyard of koenigsberg castle (with a slimy green mess coming out of them!), others saw them being driven away by the germans, and some saw the treck being captured by the soviet army. whatever the story is, there is not the slightest evidence of it having survived the end of the war. however, there are still cohorts of people about who are searching, following similar evidence than the guy who waits for the monster of loch ness to appear. german tv showed a documentary last year on the amber room, and reported on a group of restorers who are recreating the lost treasure (there is one set of colour photographs around and several b/w). over several years, they managed to create *one* panel, which looked very stunning on screen. this might be on view in kalinigrad, together with some kind of documentation. regarding the theory about the amber room having been cut up and re-used for jewellery, i do doubt it. not every pebble on the baltic coast is amber, ok, but there is still plenty around - just pay a visit to poland (not all of them are fake). and as i have understood the construction of the amber room, it was made out of very thin layers of cut amber, which would not be very useful for jewellery anyway. apart from that, there would have been much more money in selling a relic from this 'wonder of the world'. best wishes axel lapp department of art history and archaeology university of manchester [log in to unmask]