The Hermitage: Three Million Objects in Six Buildings on the Neva

The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg contains approximately 3 million objects spread across six buildings, the largest of which is the Winter Palace, the official Baroque residence of the Russian tsars. Catherine the Great started the collection in 1764 by purchasing 225 Dutch and Flemish paintings from a Berlin merchant. The collection has not stopped growing since. The range covers ancient Egyptian artefacts, Greek and Roman sculpture, Rembrandt, Rubens, Caravaggio, the Impressionists (Monet, Renoir, Cézanne), Matisse, Picasso, and Central Asian archaeology. Seeing it properly would require months.

Most visitors do a 3-4 hour circuit of the highlights and that’s a reasonable approach. The State Rooms of the Winter Palace alone (the Jordan Staircase, the Malachite Room, the Gold Drawing Room) justify the visit independent of the art collection.

What to Prioritise

The Malachite Room: malachite is a green mineral quarried in the Urals, and the Romanovs used it in extraordinary quantities. The columns, pilasters, and decorative objects in this room represent 125 tonnes of malachite. Technically extraordinary; aesthetically overwhelming.

The Italian Masters collection in the Old Hermitage: Da Vinci’s “Madonna Litta” and “Madonna with a Flower” (Benois Madonna) are both here, and they are genuine works by Da Vinci rather than studio copies. The attribution debate that surrounds some paintings attributed to him does not apply to these.

The French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists: Matisse’s “The Dance” (a large preparatory version) and “Music,” acquired directly from Matisse by the Moscow collector Shchukin in 1910; Picasso’s early and cubist periods. These were seized from private collections after the Russian Revolution and have been in the Hermitage since the 1920s.

Rooms 14-26 on the ground floor cover Scythian gold from the Eurasian steppes: the golden animals and ornamental pieces from nomadic cultures are technically and artistically extraordinary and less visited than the European gallery floors.

Practical Information

Current entry conditions and prices depend significantly on the visitor’s nationality and the current political situation; check the Hermitage’s official website (hermitagemuseum.org) before visiting. Pre-2022 prices for foreign nationals were around 600-800 RUB. Booking online in advance remains advisable to avoid queuing.

The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:30 to 18:00 (until 21:00 on Wednesdays and Fridays). First Thursday of each month was historically free for Russian nationals; this created significant crowds.

Allow at minimum 3 hours. Four is better. The museum is large enough that the choice of which sections to cover should be made in advance; the audio guide or pre-downloaded map helps with navigation.

St. Petersburg Beyond the Hermitage

The Russian Museum in the Mikhailovsky Palace (around 500 RUB entry) holds the best collection of Russian painting from the 18th to 20th centuries: Repin, Vasnetsov, Malevich, Kandinsky. Less visited than the Hermitage and covering territory the Hermitage does not. Budget half a day.

Café Pushkin on Nevsky Prospect (around 1km from the Hermitage) serves Russian classics (borscht, pelmeni, blini) in a 19th-century literary setting; lunch for two with drinks runs approximately 2,500-4,000 RUB.

Getting to St. Petersburg: direct trains from Moscow (Sapsan high-speed, 4 hours, from 2,000 RUB) are the most convenient option from within Russia. International access depends on current visa requirements and airline routes; check current conditions as they have changed significantly since 2022.