IV. Choose the word (A, B, C or D) that best fits each blank space in the following passage.
A chamber made of amber panels and gems, and backed with gold leaf, the Amber Room of the Catherine Palace near St Petersburg was considered an eighth wonder of the world. First (17) _______ in the 18th-century, it was looted by Nazi troops in 1941 and taken to Konigsberg Castle, then part of Germany, for (18) _______ as a spoil of war. In the final months of the war, with the Russians closing in on Konigsberg, Hitler ordered the room to be moved again. It (19) _______ seen since. There are many theories about its whereabouts, including that it was destroyed in Allied firebombing in 1944. The castle was later razed to the ground on the orders of the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Other reports claim the panels were loaded (20) _______ a German ship that was sunk by a Russian submarine. Hopes that it might be found in a silver mine or at the bottom of a lake were unfounded. One clue suggests (21) _______ some of it survived the war. In 1997, a mosaic that formed part of the room was found in the home of a German soldier who helped to pack it up. A replica of the room, costing millions of dollars, (22) _______ which took 24 years to build, was opened in St Petersburg in 2003. Meanwhile Polish divers are preparing to investigate crates spotted on the wreck of another German ship, the Karlsruhe, sunk by Russian warplanes in 1945 — and which may include some of the missing panels.
