THE HERMITAGE

34 Dvortsovaya naberezhnaya 190000 St. Petersburg 
Open: 10.30am - 6pm
Closed: Mondays Tel. 219-4551,311-3465
Nearest metro station: Nevsky prospekt

The Hermitage is one of the world's greatest art museums and Russia's largest art repository, totalling about three million exhibits.

The date of its foundation is considered to be 1764, when the first consignment of 225 paintings, acquired by Catherine II in Berlin, arrived in St. Petersburg. In 1863 the Hermitage became a public museum.

At present the museum occupies five buildings: the Winter Palace (1754-62, architect Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli), the Small Hermitage (1764-77, architect Yuri Velten and Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe), the Old Hermitage (1770-87, architect Yuri Velten), the New Hermitage (1842-51, architect Leo von Klenze) and the Hermitage Theatre (1783-87, architect Giacomo Quarenghi). There is also an exhibition at the Menshikov Palace, a branch of the Hermitage.

The purchase of art collections for the imperial family continued until 1917. The first of these was the collection of Count Heinrich Briihl, bought in 1769 from his heirs in Dresden. It consisted of 600 canvases, including such masterpieces as Portrait of an Old Man in Red by Rembrandt, Perseus and Andromeda by Rubens and the Deposition by Poussin. At a later date, the famous collections of Sir Robert Walpole and Count Baudouin were acquired from London and Paris.

Besides paintings, the museum also acquired collections of prints and drawings, classical antiquities, objects of Western European applied art, weapons, coins, medals and books (Voltaire's library). In the 19th century the Hermitage began to receive archaeological artefacts which, among other things, formed the nucleus of the celebrated collection of Scythian gold.

After the 1917 revolution, numerous works of art found their way into the museum, following the nationalization of private collections. Especially important additions came from the Petrograd mansions of the nobility: the Yusupovs, Sheremetevs, Shuvalovs and Stroganovs, to name but four. In Soviet times the museum's reserves were considerably augmented with materials brought back from scientific expeditions.

In order to take in all the collections currently on show you would have to cover a distance of 22 km. It would take you almost 15 years to embrace all the treasures, spending 8 hours a day in the museum and for a minute examining each exhibit.

In the Hermitage you can explore the art of Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Classical Greece and its colonies in the northern Black Sea coast area. You can also examine the culture of the Etruscans and the primitive tribes of Siberia, as well as seeing Egyptian mummies, antiqoe pottery, Tanagra statuary, Roman sculptural portraits, Scythian and Sarmatian artefacts, the unique complex of the Pazyryk burial mound of the 6th-4th centuries B.C., and many other things.

The Western European Department covers the art of Italy (8th-18th centuries), Spain (15th-19th centuries), the Netherlands, Holland and Flanders (15th-17th centuries), France (15th-20th centuries), Germany (15th-18th centuries) and England (17th-19th centuries). Its displays include masterpieces by great painters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Caravaggio, Tiepolo, El Greco, Jose Ribera, Francisco Zurbaran, Diego Velazquez, Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Francisco Goya, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, Frans Snyders, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Hans Holbein the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorraine, Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, Eugene Delacroix, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Andre Derain, Maurice Vlaminck, Pierre Bonnard, Albert Marquet and Fernand Leger. Also to be found here are exquisite sculptures by Michelangelo, Antonio Canova, Etienne-Maurice Falconet, Jean-Antoine Houdon and Auguste Rodin, and displays of Western European arms (15th-17th centuries), Italian majolicas, tapestries, Limoges enamels and Sevres porcelains.

The Department of the History of Russian Culture contains a great variety of masterials, dating right back to Ancient Rus'. Particularly noteworthy are exhibits from the Petrine era and the mid-to late 18th century. An exhibition entitled "The Artistic Decoration of the 19th century Russian Interior" is permanently on view.

The interiors of the Winter Palace are among the masterpieces of Russian monumental and applied arts. They were decorated according to designs by such illustrious artists as Rastrelli, Vasily Stasov, Carlo Rossi, Auguste Montferrand, Alexander Briullov and Andrei Stakenschneider. Of particular interest are the Jordan Staircase, the Field-Marshal's Hall, the Small Throne Room, the Gallery of 1812 (a monument to Russia's military victories), the Hall of St. George (The Great Throne Room), the Malachite Hall and the Hermitage Theatre.

The exhibition "The Winter Palace of Peter I", which opened in 1992, is devoted to the founder of the city. It is situated on the site of the former palace of the first Russian emperor. The foundation and the walls of the palace were uncovered during a restoration of the Hermitage Theatre.

© Official St Petersburg