Hidden, stolen or lost: 10 famous treasures with mysterious stories

The legendary Amber Room was given by Frederick William I of Prussia to Russia's Peter the Great in 1716. During World War II, it was looted by the Nazis, who took the valuable amber to Königsberg, then in Germany. By the end of the war, the amber panels, which had been packed away in crates, disappeared. A replica can be seen in St. Petersburg, but the original remains missing to this day.

Historians deny that the so-called "Nazi gold train" ever existed, but that hasn't stopped treasure hunters from searching for it anyway. According to legend, the train carried valuable cargo — up to 300 tons of gold, paintings and other spoils of war — and was hidden by retreating Nazis in a sealed-up rail tunnel or mine somewhere in western Poland.

"The Song of the Nibelungs," an epic poem dating back to around 1200, is the first mention of the treasure. In the saga, the gold that Siegfried obtained in a battle against hundreds of warriors, 12 giants and a dwarf is dumped by Hagen von Tronje into the Rhine. But to this day no one knows exactly where. Some researchers believe that the gold was not sunk into the river, but buried.

In the year 70 CE, the Romans stole treasures from the Second Temple in Jerusalem: a golden candelabrum and the bejeweled Table of the Divine Presence, which was also made of pure gold. But with the fall of the Roman Empire they were lost. There are many theories about their whereabouts. Some believe the trove is kept in the Vatican, or that the gold was incorporated into the Kaaba, in Mecca.

Where is the last tsar's gold treasure? Maybe in the depths of Lake Baikal? According to legend, in the winter of 1920, two years after Tsar Nicholas II had been murdered, opponents of the new communist state tried to save wagons full of gold across the frozen lake. But they broke through the ice. The search for the treasure has been ongoing ever since.

In 1307, the wealthy Knights Templar became too powerful for the French King Philip IV. He had their leaders arrested and murdered. But where was their fortune? Philip's men did not find great wealth in the religious houses. Since then, the myth that the knights hid the treasure has persisted. Some treasure hunters believe it to be in Israel, Scotland or Oak Island in Canada.

The Japanese master blacksmith Okazaki Masamune (1264-1343) produced the legendary katana that the samurai Honjo Shigenaga is said to have carried. The long sword was a status symbol of the Tokugawa dynasty and was passed down from generation to generation for centuries — until it was stolen by the Americans after World War II in 1945. It hasn't resurfaced since.

This van Gogh painting, which shows the artist walking with his painting equipment in southern France, was stored with hundreds of other pictures in a salt mine in Stassfurt, south of Magdeburg, during World War II. Two fires in April 1945 are said to have destroyed the pictures. Or were they perhaps stolen by US soldiers or the Nazis? To this day, there is no trace of the painting.

In 2000, two of Darwin's notebooks disappeared after a photo shoot. Their value: several million pounds. Did the Cambridge University Library simply file them incorrectly? After two decades of unsuccessful searches, they unexpectedly reappeared in a publicly accessible area of the library in a pink gift bag, with an Easter greeting to the librarian.

There is no trace left of the 100-kilogram coin, which was probably melted down or chopped up and then sold. On March 27, 2017, the "Big Maple Leaf" coin was stolen from a display case in Berlin's Bode Museum and transported away with a wheelbarrow and skateboard. A spectacular theft. It was valued at €3.75 million. Several men from organized crime families were convicted in 2021.