The Hermitage Museum: 3 Million Objects, Six Buildings, One Strategy for Not Being Overwhelmed

The State Hermitage in St Petersburg is the second-largest art museum in the world by collection size, housed across six buildings of which the Winter Palace is the most famous. The building was designed as an imperial residence and the decorative programme of the staterooms competes actively with the art: gilded ceilings, malachite columns, marble floors. Unlike the Louvre, where a medieval fortress was slowly converted to museum purposes, the Hermitage was always meant to impress, and it does, before you have seen a single painting.

The collection holds over 3 million objects across antiquity to the 20th century. Comprehensive coverage is impossible and you should not attempt it. A single focused day, structured around two or three specific areas, is more satisfying than trying to cover the floors.

Important note: Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, St Petersburg has been inaccessible to most Western tourists. Western governments advise against travel to Russia; direct flights and international payments are largely suspended. This account documents the collection as it was and may be accessible again when conditions change.

What to Prioritise

Western European Paintings (New Hermitage, fourth floor and connected Winter Palace galleries): The Rembrandt holdings are exceptional – 24 works including The Return of the Prodigal Son, one of the defining paintings in the Western tradition. The Spanish section has significant El Greco, Velázquez, and Murillo. Three works attributed to Leonardo da Vinci (the Benois Madonna and the Litta Madonna, both acquired by Catherine the Great, and the Madonna Litta from the later acquisition) are displayed in the Italian rooms with minimal crowd pressure compared to the Jordan Staircase area.

Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Collection (General Staff Building): The Shchukin and Morozov collections, assembled by two Moscow merchant families before the Revolution and nationalised in 1918, are displayed in the renovated General Staff Building on the opposite side of Palace Square. Matisse’s Dance, multiple Picasso works spanning the Blue Period and Cubism, and strong Cézanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh holdings. The 2014-renovated building is better lit and more coherent for this collection than the main palace.

Scythian Gold Collection (Special Treasury): The objects excavated from burial mounds across the Eurasian steppe are among the finest prehistoric metalwork in the world: animal-style torques, sword scabbards, and helmets in gold and electrum from the 7th to 4th centuries BCE. Requires a separate guided tour ticket booked in advance.

Greek and Roman Antiquities: Displayed in the ground floor of the New Hermitage, including the Gonzaga Cameo (dating to around 278 BCE, a double portrait of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II in three-layer sardonyx), one of the finest surviving carved gems from antiquity.

The Jordan Staircase and State Rooms

The Jordan Staircase, the monumental ceremonial entrance of the Winter Palace with its white marble and gilded balustrades, is architecturally the most impressive single space in the museum. The rooms through which it leads – the Field Marshals’ Hall, the Malachite Room with its columns of green malachite from the Ural mountains – are worth seeing as architecture before any painting is examined.

St Petersburg

Peter and Paul Fortress, 15 minutes north across the Neva, contains the cathedral where all Russian emperors from Peter the Great to Nicholas II are buried. The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood (10 minutes’ walk east) holds over 7,500 square metres of mosaics. The White Nights period in mid-June, when the sun barely sets, is when the city is at its most atmospheric.