The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

The Hermitage holds approximately 3 million works of art and cultural objects. Even moving briskly through every gallery would take several weeks. Most visitors have a few hours. The honest approach is to accept the incompleteness upfront, choose two or three collections that genuinely matter to you, and see those well rather than see everything badly. The museum opened to the public in 1852, but the collection began in 1764 when Catherine the Great purchased 225 Western European paintings from a Berlin dealer. She then sent agents across Europe to buy whatever was available, and the pace of acquisition never really slowed.

Travel advisory: read before making any plans

As of mid-2026, both the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the US State Department advise against all travel to Russia. The US maintains a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” designation citing the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, terrorism risk, and the risk of arbitrary detention of foreign nationals. St Petersburg has registered air raid alerts. Western card payment systems (Visa, Mastercard, American Express) do not function in Russia, and many Western embassies operate with reduced capacity or have suspended consular services for their own nationals.

This article describes what the museum offers for future visitors when circumstances change. Anyone currently planning travel to Russia should verify their government’s current advisory and check again in the week before any departure.

The collection

The Hermitage occupies six buildings along the Palace Embankment, with the Winter Palace at the centre. The Winter Palace was the primary residence of the Russian imperial family from Peter the Great’s time until 1917. The complex covers 233,000 square metres of exhibition space.

The collection spans prehistoric artefacts and Egyptian antiquities through Greek and Roman sculpture, Byzantine art, medieval European painting, and one of the most comprehensive Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collections outside France. The Impressionist holdings are in the General Staff Building across Palace Square and include works by Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, and Degas. Most of these were assembled by two Moscow merchants, Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov, in the early 20th century and nationalised after the 1917 revolution. That origin, often omitted from museum labels, makes the Hermitage’s modern art collection both remarkable and historically contested.

The Gold Room (Treasure Gallery), located in the southwest corner of the Winter Palace, is the part of the museum most visitors miss entirely because it requires a separate guided tour booked in addition to general admission. It holds Scythian gold objects from burial mounds on the Pontic steppes and in the Caucasus, dating from the 7th to 3rd centuries BC, alongside Sarmatian jewellery and pieces commissioned by Catherine the Great herself. The craftsmanship of the Scythian objects in particular, produced by nomadic cultures with no fixed settlements, consistently surprises visitors who expect the highlight to be the European paintings upstairs.

The Hermitage Theatre, designed by Giacomo Quarenghi in the 1780s, is a small neoclassical performance space connected to the main palace complex by a bridge over the Winter Canal. Chamber concerts there give a sense of the intimate scale of 18th-century imperial patronage that the grand public halls tend to obscure.

2026 exhibitions

The Hermitage announced about 20 temporary exhibitions for 2026 in its St Petersburg facilities. Key planned exhibitions include “Catherine I,” opening in the Nicholas Hall of the Winter Palace in May and marking the start of a cycle on Russian rulers, and “Outside of Academic Art: Provincial Portraiture in the Hermitage Collection,” opening in the Manege of the Small Hermitage in early spring, featuring around 80 paintings from the first half of the 19th century most of which have not been on public display before. A large-scale exhibition on Baroque and Ancient Rome is also planned. Check the official Hermitage website (hermitagemuseum.org) for current exhibition schedules.

Tickets and access

The museum opens Tuesday through Sunday and is closed Mondays. General hours are 10:30 to 18:00, with extended evening hours on Wednesdays and Fridays to 21:00. Timed-entry slots are available every 30 minutes.

Standard adult admission for foreign visitors currently runs approximately 700 to 800 roubles. Free admission is offered on four dates each year: 23 February, 8 March, 18 May (International Museum Day), and 7 December (Saint Catherine’s Day).

Foreign bank cards issued outside Russia do not function at the Hermitage or at ticket machines. Payment must be made in cash in roubles or via a Russian-issued card. Some third-party booking platforms accept foreign cards but charge a premium. For most Western visitors, cash at the ticket office is the practical solution.

Getting there

The Hermitage occupies the north bank of the Neva in the city centre. The nearest metro stations are Admiralteyskaya (Purple Line) and Nevsky Prospekt (Blue Line), each about 10 to 15 minutes’ walk. St Petersburg’s metro is efficient and inexpensive. From Pulkovo Airport, taxis to the centre take 30 to 45 minutes depending on traffic.

Border access to Russia from the west has been severely restricted since late 2023. Finland closed its border crossings with Russia; Belarus and Caucasus routes remain possible for some nationalities. Visa requirements have also changed: US passport holders require a tourist visa, obtainable through Russian embassy or e-visa portals and valid for up to 60 days. Verification of current border status and visa requirements through official channels is essential before any planning.

What to prioritise

With limited time, the most defensible priorities are: the Gold Room (Scythian and Sarmatian objects, requires separate booking), the Dutch and Flemish Masters on the first and second floors of the Winter Palace (Rembrandt’s Danae, van Eyck), the General Staff Building’s Impressionist rooms, and the State Rooms themselves. In the State Rooms, the Malachite Room requires particular attention: columns and vases carved from solid malachite, a level of material excess that takes some time to fully absorb.

Nearby sites

The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, 10 minutes east along the Griboedov Canal, was built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. Its interior mosaics cover 7,500 square metres and are among the finest examples of Russian mosaic work. Entry costs approximately 350 roubles.

The Peter and Paul Fortress, across the Neva on Zayachy Island, is the original citadel of St Petersburg, founded by Peter the Great in 1703. Its cathedral holds the tombs of most Russian emperors from Peter the Great onwards. The fortress grounds are free to enter; individual buildings have separate admission charges.

The Mariinsky Theatre, about 20 minutes’ walk southwest, presents opera and ballet of consistently high quality. Booking from outside Russia requires using the Mariinsky’s website, which has intermittently accepted foreign cards; verify this before attempting to purchase.

Hotels and restaurants

The Belmond Grand Hotel Europe on Nevsky Prospekt and Hotel Astoria near St Isaac’s Cathedral are the city’s most historically significant luxury options, both dating to the 19th century. Both continue to operate, but Western payment and booking systems face the same cash restriction as everywhere else in Russia.

For dining, cafes and restaurants along Nevsky Prospekt serve traditional Russian cuisine at a range of price points. Street food around the main boulevard is cheap and filling. Café Pushkin near Pushkinskaya Square (distinct from the Moscow restaurant of the same name) offered traditional cuisine in a 19th-century literary setting at prices well above local restaurants but modest by European standards.

For the visiting conditions to be practical again, a fundamental change in the geopolitical situation will need to occur. When that changes, the Hermitage will be exactly as it was: one of the largest and most significant art museums on earth, in a city that was specifically designed as a European capital and still reads that way from the water.