The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg. One of the largest and oldest museums in the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been open to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world. Beside the Louvre and the Prado, Hermitage Museum houses one of the most important collections of classical European art. read more…
Sankt Petersburg is probably the most unusual, “un-Russian” city of the country. This is because the origin history and historical and urban development of the “Venice of the North”. Sankt Petersburg has a little more than 300 years of history full of ups and downs. Visitors who are strolling around the streets soon have the feeling to visit one of the great European cities of the 19 century rather than a Russian city. The city at the river Neva has, compared to other capitols in the world, the most extensive historic downtown and can be described without exaggeration as an open-air museum of architecture. read more…
