We report the effect of gold nanoparticles encapsulated into the shell-forming PAMAM dendrimers on the assembly and proper-ties of multilayer microshells. We demonstrate that the PAMAM-encapsulated gold nanoparticles change dramatically the optical spectroscopic properties of microcapsule dispersions, without significantly affecting the stiffness of microcapsules. Our results indicate that the use of dendrimerprotected nanoparticles as building blocks opens numerous possibilities to vary the composition and diverse properties of microshells without changing their stiffness. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.