Hermitage
The idea of creating a museum of the arts in Russia belongs to Emperor Alexander I. In 1806 he signed a decree establishing the Armory Chamber, ‘the sanctuary of the glory of our ancestors’, which opened in 1814 becoming one of the world’s first public museums (after The Uffizi Gallery, which opened to the public in 1765, and the Louvre, which became a public museum in 1793).
Paintings, prints, sculpture, applied arts,
archaeological finds, and numismatics
Russia’s largest art museum, the Hermitage was created under Nicholas I primarily using the collection of pieces that decorated the imperial residence in the Winter Palace.
of the Imperial Museum
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12 years
The organization of the Imperial Museum took 12 years
from construction to the final installation of the exhibits
The Hermitage’s collection began with Empress Catherine II acquiring a collection of 225 Flemish and Dutch paintings from Johann Ernest Gotzkowski, a merchant from Berlin. At first the private collection was housed in the apartments of the palace, which was built by the architect Vallin de la Mothe and was called by the French name Hermitage (‘place of solitude’). Known today as the Small Hermitage, these chambers not only housed paintings but also hosted all sorts of recreational activities.
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1764
Catherine II acquires the first pieces of the collection
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1840
construction begins on the Imperial Museum
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1852
the museum opens
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1917
The Winter Palace is declared a national museum
By 1852 a museum building, the New Hermitage, had been built by the architect Leo von Klenze, known for projects such as the New Pinakothek and the Glyptothek in Munich.
- museum
anniversary - Every year the museum celebrates its anniversary on December 7,
the feast of St. Catherine
The collection was spread throughout the formal royal chambers in 1917. Until that time the display had been confined to the New Hermitage.
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on every
exhibit 1 minute -
to see the entire
collection 11 years
We are used to seeing the Winter Palace light turquoise, thought this is not historically correct. The building was originally painted a romantic vanilla – light and airy. “In a sandy paint with the finest yellow,” wrote the architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli in 1762.
In 1900 the palace facades were painted dark red, the most fashionable colour at the time. It was considered ‘Russian’ and even associated with Pan-Slavism. The State Historical Museum in Moscow is painted in exactly this colour today.
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1762vanilla
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1900dark red
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1920orange
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1946light turquoise
(as now)
Such a radical change of colour was deeply symbolic of the fact that Emperor Nicholas II was fascinated with the culture of Pre-Petrine Rus’. Most notably, the traditional Christmas Imperial Ball was held in the Winter Palace ‘in the Russian style’ in February 1903. All of St. Petersburg’s elite, about 3,000 people, dressed in costumes of the Pre-Petrine era. Foreigner visitors, diplomats, artists and businessmen alike were amazed by the splendor of the costumes. The whole of European fashion was impacted by this singular event. Many couturiers drew inspiration form Russian motifs.
In the avant-garde twenties they even experimented with an orange colour scheme on the Winter Palace. It wasn’t until restorations in 1946 that the Winter Palace was painted the cold light turquoise, which stood in stark contrast to the historical warm colours.
- 1754–1762 Winter
Palace - 1764 Small
Hermitage - 1771–1787 Old (Great)
Hermitage - 1783–1787 Hermitage
Theater - 1842–1851 The New
Hermitage - 1726–1742 Reserve House
of the Winter
Palace - 1710–1711 Menshikov
Palace
The modern State Hermitage is a sophisticated museum complex. The museum’s main exposition takes up five buildings situated along the embankment of the Neva River in the center of St. Petersburg. The Winter Palace is considered the main building of the group.
To date the museum’s collection contains about 3 million works of art and monuments of world culture, from the Stone Age up to our century. The Hermitage celebrates it 250th anniversary in 2014.
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2,882,385 people
Total number
of visitors -
35,576 tours
Tours
given -
1,000,000 people
Hermitage exhibitions
abroad are visited by about
1,000,000 people -
3,850,000 people
The Hermitage’s website
was visited by
3,850,000 people