Nazi shipwreck may hold Amber Room ----------------------------------------------- Polish divers claim to have found the wreck of a German World War II ship that may solve a decades-old mystery – the whereabouts of the fabled Amber Room, dubbed the eighth wonder of the world ----------------------------------------------- DISAPPEARANCE OF AMBER ROOM 1716: Amber Room gifted by Prussia’s King Frederick Wilhelm I to Russian Tsar Peter the Great, who installed it in Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, outside St Petersburg ----------------------------------------------- 1941: Palace looted by Nazis – contents of Amber Room dismantled and taken to German city of Koenigsberg (present-day Kaliningrad) where it is reconstructed in castle on Baltic coast ----------------------------------------------- 1944-45: Allied bombing raids destroy city – trail of room lost ----------------------------------------------- DISCOVERY OF SS KARLSRUHE Apr 11, 1945: Steamer embarks from Koenigsberg with 1,083 people and hundreds of tonnes of cargo on board, as part of Operation Hannibal – evacuation of more than one million German troops fleeing advancing Red Army ----------------------------------------------- Amber Room in 1917. Baroque chamber decorated with 5.5 tonnes of amber, gold and other semi-precious stones ----------------------------------------------- Baltic Sea GERMANY Wreck of SS Karlsruhe Ustka POLAND St Petersburg RUSSIA Kaliningrad (RUSSIA) 250km 150 miles ----------------------------------------------- Apr 13: Karlsruhe sunk by Soviet warplanes off coast of Poland with loss of 933 passengers ----------------------------------------------- Sep 2020: Divers from Polish Baltictech team locate Karlsruhe wreck on seabed at depth of 88m. Team awaiting official permission to raise crates to surface ----------------------------------------------- Sources: Baltictech, Reuters, Smithsonian Magazine Picture: T omasz Stachura/Baltictech Picture: Newscom © GRAPHIC NEWS