Russia: The Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg)

The one thing you absolutely cannot miss in St. Petersburg is the Hermitage Museum.  Considered one of the leading museums in the world, visiting it is an absolutely mind-blowing experience.  I ended up spending a whole day there, and could have easily stayed longer.  It's free for students, and I can honestly say this is the best museum I've ever been to.

Small section of the exterior of the Hermitage Museum.  This facade faces the enormous Palace Square, which includes the worlds tallest free-standing monument and the General Staff Buildings.  I must have pushed the wrong button on my camera because the settings look a bit off, but you get the idea. This facade goes on for a whole block and around the corner.

The Hemitage museum is partly housed in the Winter Palace, the official residence of the Tsars until 1917 (built by Rastelli between 1754 and 1762).  That's what makes the Hermitage so much more than a museum: it is also one of the finest palaces in the world.  I was often too distracted by the incredible ceilings to notice the paintings!

See what I mean? 

I have never seen a palace more elaborate than the Winter Palace.  The Romanovs sure had a lot of natural resources, money and serfs!  The scale of the rooms is enormous, each has soaring ceilings and there's gold leaf everywhere.  One of my favourite rooms was a corridor that seemed to go on forever, with several dozen official portraits of the Tsars and Tsarinas of Russia. 

The Throne Room.  

This room literally glowed. That's gold leaf on the columns.

Close up of the golden columns.

The Malachite Room.  There are over 2 tonnes of ornamental stone in this room.  Besides the green malachite columns and vases, there is lots of gold leaf going on as well.

Just a hallway...

The Crimson Dressing Room.  This was where the Tsarina would get dressed in front of a bunch of couriers every morning.  The walls are covered in crimson silk.

The Gold Drawing Room.  Yes, the walls and ceiling are covered in gold.  It houses a spectacular display of carved gems acquired by Catherine the Great.

There are also sections of the Hermitage Museum that were built specifically to display the treasures amassed by Catherine the Great, and the museum has been open to the public since 1852.  The Romanovs continued buying up collections, adding them to their own private art collections.  The collection of European paintings was largely put together according to their personal taste (and they obviously had good taste).  Other palaces in St. Petersburg are have added to the museum, such as the Menchikov Palace. 

The walls of this hall are covered with portraits of the heroes of the war against the French, when Tsar Alexander I's troops triumphed over Napoleon. 

Lots of vases in the Hermitage.  Although this one was originally supposed to be housed on an upper floor,  it's so big and heavy, when it was delivered to the Hermitage it was decided, on second thought, maybe it was better to leave it on the ground floor, where it remains today.   

Hall in the classical collection.  There are galleries full of Greek and Roman busts.  There were even older sections of the museum,  displaying priceless Scythian gold and other pre-historic artifacts.  There is also a wide-range of oriental art. 

Hall of neo-classical sculptures.  Hard to notice the statues with those ceilings!

It's easy to imagine the Romanovs strolling around these hallways...

This is just the back staircase (actually!)

Stunning parquet floors.  I felt bad for walking on them.

Built-in art.

The Raphael Loggias.  This is the most incredible hallway I've ever seen! And they just use it to get from one room to another...

Who needs paintings when you can have walls.

Pavilion Hall.  Audrey Stakenschneider built this white marble and gold hall as part of the "more intimate" Small Hermitage building. 

Pavillion Hall.

The quality of the art in the Hermitage is astounding.  Name any famous artist, ever, and there will be some of his works in the Hermitage.  There was a room just for Rembrandts, two for Picasso (including some of his pottery work - I didn't even know he was a sculptor!), a corridor for Raphael... It took me 6 hours to visit the collections (and could have taken much longer!) so you can imagine how many treasures there are in this museum. Plus 3 million pieces (!) in storage or on loan to other museums.  

Stolen Kiss (1780s), by Jean Honoré.  The pictures of the painting included here I took with my camera, so they are larger than they appear.  

Madonna and Child by Leonardo da Vinci.  Da Vinci was not a very prolific painter, only about 10 works are attributed to him as the sole contributor, and 2 of them are on display at the Hermitage (the other is another Madonna and Child).

Women of Arles (1888) by Vincent van Gogh

I can't remember who this was by: Matisse, Manet, Monet...?

I just finished reading a book called "The Madonnas of Leningrad", about a girl who worked at the Hermitage during WWII.  The city was totally surrounded by the German army in a siege that lasted 872 days.  Supplies were almost entirely cut off, and over 1 million people died.  For one of the longest, most destructive and lethal sieges in modern history, it is rarely mentioned in the history books or in Hollywood war movies.  When word reached St. Petersburg that the Nazis were advancing on the city, the Hermitage staff packed millions of priceless paintings and artefacts up and shipped them off to the Urals for safe-keeping.  They left the empty frames on the walls of the Hermitage as a reminder that the paintings would return.  The main character in the novel, based on historical accounts of life during the siege, recounts eating wall paper glue and boiling leather belts to try and get some nourishment.

It was completely worth the hassle and expense of organizing a Russian visa just to see this museum.  I'm not just saying that as a history buff - I don't think there's anyone on this earth who would not be impressed by the Hermitage.  If you are every planning on visiting St. Petersburg, make sure you allow for a whole day's visit - you don't want to have to skip anything!