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Amber, the translucent fossil resin left by long-extinct trees, is most often seen in small objects -- beads, amulets, rings. But rebuilding the famous czarist wonder took more than six tons of high-quality amber taken from the Baltic Sea. The room is 1,080 square feet, the size of a large living room. The amber panels cover three of the 26-foot-high walls; windows cover most of the fourth wall. A team of Russian master craftsmen has worked full time since the early 1980s to refashion the room with little more than a series of prewar black-and-white photographs to guide them. This was taken in 1941, and one wonders where all this could possibly be hidden. The stuff is very light, and 6 tons is a large volume.
