The Hermitage is a celebrated museum, the pride of Russia and her northern capital, St. Petersburg. The Hermitage houses more than three and a half million objects of art and culture. These include paintings, sculptures, drawings and engravings, the richest collection of works of applied arts and more than one million coins and medals and archaeological and cultural artifacts.
     The Hermitage occupies five buildings in the centre of St. Petersburg being one of the most beautiful architectural ensembles. It includes the Winter Palace (the former residence of the Russian Emperors), the Hermitage Theatre and also the museum buildings proper - the Small, Old and New Hermitages.
     The museum was initiated in 1764. Empress Catherine II, Catherine the Great, is inseparably linked with the history of the Hermitage. It was her idea to construct a series of buildings alongside the Winter Palace to house her vast collections of art from many parts of the world.
     The Hermitage actually began with the Empress's desire to have a cosy little retreat close to her grand official residence in which she could relax from the business of ruling the state and enjoy intelligent conversations and convivial amusements in the company of true friends. The name 'Hermitage' - borrowed from the French - was immediately adopted for this refuge of solitude. From 1764 onwards, over the following three decades, Catherine expanded her palatial Hermitage, creating a brilliant extension to the imperial residence in St. Petersburg. Leaving the imposing Winter Palace for formal state events, the Empress gradually filled her Hermitage with art treasures: collections of paintings, sculpture, cameos, medals and coins as well as a splendid library, which between them brought undying fame to the reign of Catherine the Great.
     From a private palatial museum the Hermitage by the mid-19th century had already been transformed into the most outstanding European museum of world art.
     The 1917 revolution converted the Imperial Hermitage into the State Hermitage. During the course of almost 80 years of the 20th century the museum collections grew almost four times as much. In the first years following the revolution the Hermitage received the most lavish private art collections, nationalized by the Soviet government. There are over 350 exhibition halls in the Hermitage.The museum keeps 15 thousand paintings, 12 thousand sculptures, 600 thousand drawings, over 600 thousand monuments of archeology, over one million coins and medals, and 4224 thousand items of applied arts. Paintings of such great masters as Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Raphael, Rembrandt, Poussain, Manet, Renoir are on display in the halls of the museum. The Hermitage is famous through its collection of Scythian gold articles.
     Nowadays thousands of visitors from all corners of the globe visit the Hermitage every year. For them the journey to the realm of treasures of world culture begins at the Winter Palace.