The State Hermitage Museum (Russian: Государственный Эрмитаж, romanized: Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, IPA: [ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ]) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and holds the largest collection of paintings in the world. It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. The Art Newspaper ranked the museum 10th in their list of the most visited art museums, with 2,812,913 visitors in 2022. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprises over three million items (the numismatic collection accounting for about one-third of them). The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya, and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centres abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since July 1992, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky. Of the six buildings in the main museum complex, five—namely the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, and Hermitage Theatre—are all open to the public. The entrance ticket for foreign tourists costs more than the fee paid by citizens of Russia and Belarus. However, entrance is free of charge the third Thursday of every month for all visitors, and free daily for students and children. The museum is closed on Mondays. The entrance for individual visitors is located in the Winter Palace, accessible from the Courtyard.
Name A hermitage is the dwelling of a hermit or recluse, who lives in isolation from society. Originally, the "Hermitage" of the Winter Palace referred to the Palace's private apartments—so-named because, as the personal residence of the Tsars, they were intended to be a refuge from the obligations of courtly life; where the Russian sovereigns could retreat to with their intimate circle of personal friends. As such, what is today the Hermitage Museum was initially the personal collection of the Russian Imperial family. The Hermitage of the Winter Palace was founded by Catherine the Great, who used these apartments to host private salons. She also founded the Museum's collection in 1764, with a collection of 225 paintings from Western Europe. Today, the Hermitage Museum includes a complex of six buildings, and has extended beyond the original palace apartments (today called the "Small Hermitage").
Buildings Originally, the only building housing the collection was the "Small Hermitage". Today, the Hermitage Museum encompasses many buildings on the Palace Embankment and its neighbourhoods. Apart from the Small Hermitage, the museum now also includes the "Old Hermitage" (also called "Large Hermitage"), the "New Hermitage", the "Hermitage Theatre", and the "Winter Palace", the former main residence of the Russian tsars. In recent years, the Hermitage has expanded to the General Staff Building on the Palace Square facing the Winter Palace, and the Menshikov Palace.
Collections The Western European Art collection includes European paintings, sculpture, and applied art from the 13th to the 20th centuries.
Egyptian antiquities
Since 1940, the Egyptian collection, dating back to 1852 and including the former Castiglione Collection, has occupied a large hall on the ground floor in the eastern part of the Winter Palace.
Classical antiquities The collection of classical antiquities occupies most of the ground floor of the Old and New Hermitage buildings. The interiors of the ground floor were designed by the German architect Leo von Klenze in the Greek Revival style in the early 1850s, using painted polished stucco and columns of natural marble and granite. The Room of the Great Vase in the western wing features the 2.57 m (8.4 ft) high Kolyvan Vase, weighing 19 t (42,000 lb), made of jasper in 1843 and installed before the walls were erected. While the western wing was designed for exhibitions, the rooms on the ground floor in the eastern wing of the New Hermitage, now also hosting exhibitions, were originally intended for libraries. The collection of classical antiquities features Greek artefacts from the third millennium – fifth century BC, ancient Greek pottery, items from the Greek cities of the North Pontic Greek colonies, Hellenistic sculpture and jewellery, including engraved gems and cameos, such as the famous Gonzaga Cameo, Italic art from the 9th to second century BC, Roman marble and bronze sculpture and applied art from the first century BC to fourth century AD, including copies of Classical and Hellenistic Greek sculptures. One of the highlights of the collection is the Tauride Venus, which, according to latest research, is an original Hellenistic Greek sculpture rather than a Roman copy as it was thought before. There are, however, only a few pieces of authentic Classical Greek sculpture and sepulchral monuments.
Prehistoric art On the ground floor in the western wing of the Winter Palace the collections of prehistoric artefacts and the culture and art of the Caucasus are located, as well as the second treasure gallery. The prehistoric artefacts date from the Paleolithic to the Iron Age and were excavated all over Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire. Among them is a renowned collection of the art and culture of nomadic tribes of the Altai from Pazyryk and Bashadar sites, including the world's oldest surviving knotted-pile carpet and a well-preserved wooden chariot, both from the 4th–3rd centuries BC. The Caucasian exhibition includes a collection of Urartu artefacts from Armenia and Western Armenia. Many of them were excavated at Teishebaini under the supervision of Boris Piotrovsky, former director of the Hermitage Museum.
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