St. Petersburg’s most popular visitor attraction, and one of the world’s largest and most prestigious museums, the Hermitage is a must-see for all first-time travelers to the city. With over 3 million items in its collection, it also definitely rewards repeat visits, and new-comers can only hope to get a brief taste of the riches on offer here, from Impressionist masterpieces to fascinating Oriental treasures. One estimate has it that you would need eleven years to view each exhibit on display for just one minute, so many visitors prefer to organize a guided tour to ensure they have time to catch all the collection’s highlights. Art aficionados, however, may find it more rewarding to seek out for themselves the works that they are particularly interested in.

State Hermitage Museum as seen from Palace Square

The bulk of the Hermitage collection is housed in the Winter Palace, formerly the official residence of the Romanov Tsars, and its several annexes. However, there are a number of other sites that constitute part of the Hermitage, including the recently opened Storage Facility in the north of St. Petersburg, which offers guided tours through some of the museum’s vast stocks. Our guide to visiting the Hermitage is designed to help you find your way around this enormous collection, with a detailed tour of the main site and individual information on each of the affiliated museums.

Although the Hermitage has one of the largest collections of art in the world, it is not close to being the busiest – it doesn’t even reach the top 20, but OK, with over 10,000 visitors per day, it does get very crowded.

When we visited St. Petersburg in Russia, during one of our overnight stays, I had the privilege to go on a night tour after closing time. This means, instead of 8000 people, there were only 25 in the group which gave me a great opportunity to take some good photos; Here they are

Visiting this museum was an amazing experience. After the visit, we walked around the area and it’s not only the Hermitage that is unique….walking around in St. Petersburg is like walking in a museum. Here are some photos I took outside the Hermitage.

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