5.3.2012 Forty bags filled with silver treasure

Workers who reconstructed a villa in St. Petersburg remained in shock. The historic building has been a secret for many years. Inside the randomly exposed room were forty bags of treasure.

Inside the bags were silverware, ornaments, and decorations. The historic house belonged to the Naryshkin family. It was an aristocratic family that influenced the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. The importance of the family grew after Natalie Kirillovna Naryshkin became the second wife of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and the mother of Tsarevich Peter. After the Tsar's death, they were deprived of their influence and affected by the revolt of the archers in 1682. They regained power after the reign of Peter the Great.

At that time, the Russian media mentioned the most probable variant, where a silver treasure was taken in a St. Petersburg house. Apparently it was collected by an officer of the Hussar Regiment of the Tsarist Guard, Sergei Somov. After the Bolshevik revolution, he hid the objects in a villa and emigrated to France, where he died in February 1976.

The background was in a secret room. Basically, it was a hidden storage space between the two floors. Many items were packaged in newspapers dating back to the beginning of 1917, when the Bolshevik Revolution was raging in Russia. The villa was bought in 1875 by Duke Vasily Naryshkin. It was created by connecting two houses from the eighteenth century.

After the Bolsheviks nationalized private property, part of the castle became a dining room, according to Russian news reports. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a private apartment in the building. The villa was later bought by Intarsia, which set up a conference and cultural center there.

Intarsia said it would like to exhibit treasures at their cultural center in the future for the public to see. Initially, they were held by the city committee for the preservation of historical monuments. A communist organization has applied for the treasure.

"The important thing is that at the time of the creation of the shelter, the treasure was no longer the property of the Naryshkins," Sergei Malinkovich, the head of the regional communist organization, explained at the time.

The closest relative of the Naryshkins who lived in the house lives in France. But it was not clear if he had
interest in found valuables.

Resources:
www.cbsnews.com, www.vseved.cz, www.mgsrefining.com, www.fontanka.ru