Hermitage

September 19, 2006
The Hermitage Museum is among the top three museums in the world along with the Louvre, the National Gallery in London and the Hermitage. Five main buildings, 1057 rooms and 117 staircases. It houses works from da Vinci, Rembrandt, Titians, Michelangelo, Rubens, Picasso and Mattise.

There are over 3 million exhibitions! Our tour guide said that in order to see every exhibition it would take years. In fact, to spend one minute at each exhibition it would take 8 years to see the entire collection. Needless to say, I saw just a fraction of it.

The Hermitage started with Catherine the Great purchasing 200 paintings from a German merchant. Catherine the Great was trying to follow in the footsteps of Peter the Great, in enlightening her country. Catherine turned part of her Winter Palace into the Hermitage which means “Hermit’s Place”. Before passing away, Catherine collected over 10,000 pieces and although quite sizeable, she still referred to her museum as the Hermitage.

After the Revolution of 1917, the museum was opened to the public and the number of exhibitions quickly grew. In fact the size of the overall collection quadrupled due to the number of works taken from private collections by the new government.

Unfortunately we had just a couple of hours in the Hermitage. I could have spent a few hours in the State rooms alone imagining the magnificent events during the days of the Tsars not to mention a lot more time viewing the art.