10 of The World's Most Valuable Vanished Treasures

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Tsarskoe Selo, near St. Petersburg, was the site of the 18th-century Catherine Palace Amber Room. This room had gold-gilded mosaics, mirrors, carvings, and amber panels weighing 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms). Germany captured Tsarskoe Selo in 1941 and disassembled the room's paneling and artwork.

THE AMBER ROOM

Dublin Castle's "crown jewels of Ireland" were stolen in 1907 and "not associated with any coronation ceremony and comprised no crown. In 2001, University College Cork historian and project manager Tomás O'Riordan reported about a jewelled star, diamond brooch, and five gold collars of the Order of St. Patrick, all Crown property, in History Ireland magazine

CROWN JEWELS OF IRELAND

Sappho was 7th-century B.C. Shakespeare. The ancient Greeks admired her poetry. Unfortunately, few of her poems exist. Oxford papyrologist Dirk Obbink found portions of two Sappho verses in 2014. She writes two poems about her brothers and unrequited love. 

SAPPHO'S LOST POEMS

In 1357, the São Vicente ship went from Lisbon to Avignon, France, carrying gifts from the recently departed bishop of Lisbon, Thibaud de Castillon. Gold, silver, rings, tapestries, jewels, fine plates, and portable altars were riches. The crew of two pirate warships ambushed the São Vicente near Cartagena, Spain, and plundered its treasure. 

DEAD BISHOP'S TREASURE

The 15th-century Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck at Saint Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium, includes the "Just Judges" panel. The panel portrays several unidentified figures on horseback. Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy when the altarpiece was made, may be a character. 

THE JUST JUDGES

India may have sent the yellow 137-carat Florentine Diamond to Europe in the late 15th century. When and how it reached Europe is debated. The Florentine Diamond attracted Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy from 1467-1477, who had it cut from a larger diamond and brought it into battle, where he was murdered. 

FLORENTINE DIAMOND

The Italian League (headed by Florence) defeated Milan in the Battle of Anghiari in 1440, which Leonardo da Vinci painted in 1505. When painter and architect Giorgio Vasari rebuilt Florence's Palazzo Vecchio in 1563, the mural disappeared. 

LOST DA VINCI MURAL

A copper scroll describing massive buried wealth in the West Bank Qumran caves may be the oddest Dead Sea Scroll. A Jordanian museum holds this Copper Scroll. Scholars disagree on whether the scroll writer described a real or mythological treasure. 

COPPER SCROLL TREASURES

In 1923, the fossils of a 200,000–750,000-year-old hominid called Peking Man (a type of Homo erectus) were found in a cave near Zhoukoudian, near Beijing. The fossils vanished during the 1941 Japanese invasion of China and are still missing. 

PEKING MAN

Legend has it that SS officer Ernst Kaltenbrunner sank a lot of gold into Lake Toplitz in Austria during the conclusion of World War II to protect it from the Allies. Numerous searches have yielded no gold since then. 

NAZI GOLD

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