The Hermitage Museum

We just got back from a family vacation to Moscow and St. Petersburg. I’ve downloaded my photos, all 747 of them, and I’m going to make a few posts of the hilights. For me, naturally, the hilights were the art museums!

Above is the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg from the River Neva, we took a boatride one day. The Hermitage was built in 1764 by Katherine the Great as her Winter Palace. The woman had great taste! This is probably the most fantastic place I have ever seen. I’ve been to Versailles but this place is even more over the top. If I were to dream of a palace, I couldn’t even have imaged such a ornate glorious place. And then, to fill it with art! Touring the Hermitage Museum was a day I will never forget.

The room below has fluted columns along each side and they’re covered in gold!

Look at that beautiful ceiling in the photo below. All the paneling, the inlaid wood, all that detail hand carved and then gilded. Amazing.

Below is the grand staircase, a double staircase. The photo doesn’t do it justice though.

And if you look up, you’ll see a beautiful painting on the ceiling.

There are some 3 million pieces of art in the Hermitage. The Hermitage has the largest collection of paintings in the world, though not all on display. The walls are covered with art. I enjoyed seeing portraits of the Russian Czars and Czarinas, many full sized.

I took many many photos. Many of my photos are just photos of details, like Rembrandt’s Flora below:

I loved the detail on these dresses:

What an amazing place. I walked around and had to keep telling myself to close my mouth, my jaw dropped as we walked into just about every room.