Hermitage Museum

The Hermitage Museum is an art and culture museum located in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is recognized as one of the oldest museums in the world and also one of the largest cultural institutions with nearly 3 million items on display.

The museum collections are covered in a complex of six historic buildings, including the Palace Embankment, the Winter Palace, the Menshikov Palace, the Museum of Porcelain, the Storage Facility at Staraya Derevna and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building.

The Hermitage Museum is well-known for hosting one of the greatest collections of paintings.
The current manager of the museum is Mikhail Piotrovsky.

The first art collection in the museum was established by Catherine the Great in 1764. It was presented by Rembrandt, Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Antoon van Dyck, Paolo Verones, Frans Hals, Raphael, Holbein as well as Titan, Jan Steen, Hendrick Goltzius, Dirck van Baburen, Hendrick van Balen and Gerrit van Honthorst.

Catherine the Great provided the museum with a further 4,000 paintings, 38,000 books, 10,000 engraved gems, 16,000 coins, and medals, 10,000 drawings and also a natural history collection. Due to increase in the number of exhibits, it became necessary to be built an additional building. The construction work was entrusted to Yury Velten who completed the building in 1787, became known as the Large Hermitage or also Old Hermitage.

On demanding by Nicholas I, the German architect Leo von Klenze had to build a building for the public museum. The New Hermitage was officially opened in 1852.

In 1922 the Hermitage Museum acquired a very significant collection of 19th-century European paintings from the Academy of Arts.

In 1948 by the Moscow Museum of New Western Art, 316 displays of Impressionist, post-Impressionist and modern art were delivered to the Hermitage Museum, including collections of Sergei Shchukin, Ivan Morozov as well as some works of art by Matisse and Picasso.

In 2003 the Museum of Porcelain was established as a part of the Hermitage Museum.
The museum collections are consisted of Egyptian antiquities, Classical antiquities, Prehistoric Art, Jewellery and decorative Art, Italian Renaissance, Italian and Spanish fine Art, Knight’s Hall, Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque, German and French fine art, Russian art as well as Neoclassical, Impressionist and post-Impressionist art.

Address:
Hermitage Museum
34 Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya
St. Petersburg 190000
Russia

Tel: 812 110 9079