Filed under: featuredarticle, museums, the Hermitage
St. Petersburg museums: The Hermitage
This is
the best
the greatest
the largest
the most visited
with the longest queue (maybe in the world 
the Hermitage.
The first and foremost must-see and must-attend for everybody coming to St. Petersburg. It’s not even a pure museum, it now can be called a mix of a museum, theatre, cultural center, music academy and many more. It’s a house you may live in for a day, since 10.00 till 18.00.
What is important: leave the dream of being able to see all the items in the main building of the Hermitage for a single day. One week, that’s what you might need. Leave along the buildings.
The museum has its delivering information you need. For you to make quick search I give you some key hyperlinks to all main sections and some basic facts here.
The structure of the Hermitage includes not only the famous main museum complex in the Winter Palace at the Dvortsovaya (Palace) Square, . And one even in Europe, in .
The history of the museum dates back to the times of the Ekatherina the Great, who was collecting paintings and other items and keeping them in the rooms of the Winter Palace. These rooms were then called by French word “hermitage”. Officially the museum was opened in 1852.
The best time to visit the Hermitage is in the winter. In the early morning. It’s not a joke. In the high-season, it’s really overcrowded.
Admission fee for foreigners is 300 rubles, for Russian citizens is 100 rubles. Special exhibitions admission costs extra. You are allowed to make amateur photos and video for additional 200 rubles. On the ground floor there is a buffet and an Internet-cafe.
A virtual tour with descriptions of collections is . In the section about the Hermitage’s history I’d recommend you the piece about the museum’s tower .
And there is another that’s being covered in the media sometimes more frequent than the paintings, numismatics and the works of applied arts. You’ll never guess what it is. It’s about the Hermitage’s cats. More than 50 cats are quarding the museums from rats and very popular inhabitants. Even outside Russia they have their fans, which send them food and money! The Hermitage director complainted even one day that visitors ask more frequenly about the cats than about Rembrandt! Unfortunately, inside the building you cannot meet them, they are not allowed here. But you may be lucky enough to meet one or two of them just before the entrance as I did a few days ago.
There is even a special transport sign for drivers coming into the museum’s internal yards. It is below:
Photo credit:
The slogan reads: “Be cautious, cats!”
Hard to believe, but this sign really exists, is easy to be seen by walkers, and is really functional.
The last thing to remember: on Mondays the Hermitage is closed.
Tags: featuredarticle, museums, the Hermitage
7 Comments
Ivan, I was waiting for this article. I knew you would write about the hermitage. I love the phot and it shows that the building is far more beautiful than the hermitage building in Amsterdam. Now that I have read about the cats, I want to visit the ‘mother’ hermitage even more than before. Do the cats roam freely through the museum?
Hi, Marianne, yes, I’ve read the post about the Hermitage in Amsterdam and thought I should follow.
Unfotunately, cats can be seen only outside the buiding, they are not allowed to get into the rooms. But they can see the paintings. Some time ago St. Petersburg painters organized a special exhibition for cats in the Hermitage. Every year the museum organizes special events dedicated to them, for example, exhibitions with videoclips telling about their hard work!
Ivan, As a cat lover, I really must visit the Hermitage. But not only the Hermitage also St Petersburg. I read somewhere (can’t remmeber where) that the lay-out of the city was inspired by the lay-out of Amsterdam. I looked at a St Peterburg city map, but did not see much similarity.
I think the similarity concerns only the very center of St. Petersburg.
Peter the Great (Peter de Grote) was a known lover of Neederlandse, but died in 1725. The city was founded in 1703, so Peter managed to build only a little part of St. Petersburg as we know it today.
About the cats. That is a link to an article in one Russian magazine with many photos at the page:
I think I’ll cover the cats’ theme later in a separate post.