Nazi treasure hunters have been given permission to start the excavation of a secret World War II bunker that could contain the legendary lost Amber Room.
The breathtaking carved and bejewelled creation was looted by invading Nazi troops from a Russian royal palace near St Petersburg in 1941 to be sent to Berlin.
But it was lost in the chaos of the dying days of the war and has become one of the most elusive lost treasures of World War II.
Picture shows corner section of the reconstructed Amber Room, undated. Note: Photo from Wikipedia. (Newsflash/NX)
Now a new search sanctioned by antiquities officials in Poland may finally lead to its discovery an what excavators believe is a bunker crammed with looted Nazi treasure.
Engineer and amateur historian Jan Delingowski is leading the search in the Polish region of Kashubia, once part of a restricted SS zone.
Experts believe SS officials in occupied Wroclaw, south-west Poland, then called Breslau, loaded train wagons with looted treasures to escape the advancing Red Army.
Picture shows an angel statue featured on the wall of the Amber Room, undated. Note: Photo from Wikipedia. (Newsflash/NX)
But the train never emerged from its hiding place and treasure hunters from around the world have spent 80 years trying to track it down.
Delingowski, who spent a decade investigating the chamber's disappearance, says its possible location was disclosed by a former prison inmate.
The prisoner claims he met high-ranking Nazi Erich Koch while he was imprisoned in Poland for war crimes.
Koch is said to have confided that a convoy transporting looted art and treasures carrying the Amber Room never reached Berlin but vanished in northern Poland.
Picture shows the Amber room of the Catherine Palace, undated. Note: Photo from Wikipedia. (Newsflash/NX)
Delingowski says: "The chests filled with loot were supposedly transported westwards by lorry along the Berlinka, the motorway leading to the capital of the Third Reich.
"However, they never reached Berlin."
Instead, according to Delingowski, the chests were deposited in a bunker concealed "on a hill near a lake, within the grounds of former SS barracks."
Now Poland's Pomeranian Voivodeship Conservator of Monuments has given permission for the hunt with excavations due to start this month (Aug).
Picture shows a hand-coloured photograph of the original Amber Room, 1931. Note: Photo from Wikipedia. (Newsflash/NX)
The Amber Room of the Czars, often called the 'eighth wonder of the world', was a richly decorated chamber of amber, gold and mirrors originally gifted to Russia by Prussia.
When German forces invaded, Russian antiquities experts feared it was too frail to dismantle and covered it behind fake walls and cheap wallpaper.
Nazi troops found it almost instantly and although two engineers took it down intact in just 36 hours it disappeared on its way to Berlin.
It remains one of the great lost treasures of the Second World War.
(Simona Kitanovska / newsX)