The original Amber Room that stood in this place was one of the great masterpieces of the 18th century. Somewhere along the line--no one at the Catherine Palace museum now seems quite sure when--it acquired the immodest nickname "the Eighth Wonder of the World," still to be found in articles and guidebooks today. That, however, is more than can be said for the first Amber Room itself, which disappeared during the chaotic final months of World War II and can't be found at all.

As ARTnews put it, "The mystery surrounding its fate is to the Russians what UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle are in the West." And not just to Russians. The mystery has sunk its hooks into an international mélange of politicians, filmmakers, ex-Nazis, treasure divers, art historians and freelance conspiracy paranoids. The Amber Room files of the Stasi, the former East German secret police, run to some 180,000 pages, which apparently someone has counted. Internet sites raise virtual eyebrows over the supposed curse that has caused the suspicious deaths of several Amber Room hunters; on Amberroom.org, Baron Eduard von Falz-Fein, founder of the Amber Room Club (which included French mystery writer Georges Simenon), pledges $5 million to its finder. There are at least four suspense novels in English on the topic, all called The Amber Room. The missing panels have even played a role in international relations. Russian president Boris Yeltsin lobbed a diplomatic grenade during a 1991 state visit to Germany by proclaiming that he knew where the Germans had hidden the Amber Room and he jolly well wanted it back.