10 Fascinating Facts about the State Hermitage Museum

10 Fascinating Facts about the State Hermitage Museum

The State Hermitage Museum was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and it was opened to the public in 1852. It is located in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The State Hermitage Museum is considered to be the largest and oldest art Museum in the world. It has a huge collection of over 3 million works of art and cultural artefact including the world’s largest painting collection.

Therefore, this article will explore some fascinating facts about the state hermitage museum to enable the reader to acquire more information about the museum.

1. Hermitage is ‘Exclusive’

A picture of the State Hermitage Museum by Godot13-Wikimedia

The museum’s name “Hermitage” is derived from the French word “hermit” or Latin “eremita”, meaning “people who live alone”.

Since its creation, the Hermitage is considered exclusive in various ways. First, it’s a unique piece of work which until today it’s a perfect example of Baroque architecture in Russia. Secondly, the Hermitage was home to Russian Tsars and for almost a 100years it was not open to the public. This exclusiveness predetermined the Museum’s name. 

2. It would take you 11 years to view each piece of the collection

The State Hermitage Museum consists of nearly 3 million pieces of art dating back to the era of the stone age to the present day therefore when one spends a minute looking at each piece of work and an eight-hour daily visit to the museum, he or she will take 11 years to see them all.

3. It was a Residence for the Royal family

The interior of the museum by Andrey Filippov-Wikimedia

The Winter Palace was the official residence for the Romanov Tsars and also while the Royal Family moved from place to place the Winter palace served as its official residence until the Russian Revolution in 1917.

The winter palace is part of a gorgeous palatial complex set on the Neva River Embankment and is one of the greatest symbols of imperial Russia. It was too designed by outstanding architects including Bartolomeo Rastrelli.

4. The fire incident

In the year 1837 almost 183 years back a terrible fire broke out in the hermitage due to construction mistakes and it destroyed most of the rooms of the Winter Palace together with its exterior. It was considered one of the largest fires in the history of Petersburg.

During the fire incident, there were about 3000 people in the building and most of those people were the workers working in the Royal family.                                                                                   

Over 20,000 soldiers participated in putting out the fire and luckily the hermitage was protected by brick walls which enabled the fire not to spread. The fire continued for almost 30 hours and it destroyed paintings and other valuable pieces of art. It, later on, took more than 2 years for the museum to be rebuilt so that the royal families could return to their homes.

5. Home to over 70 cats

Another interesting fact about the State Hermitage Museum is that it has employed over 50 to 70 cats so that they can get rid of the mice and rats in the museum. Cats were first brought to the Winter palace by the order of Elizabeth 1 because she wanted to get rid of mice and rats in her home. As time went by the method was considered effective and the cats were employed in the museum most especially when it started to be filled with pieces of artwork.

6. The museum had fun trying out different colours

The winter palace has been repainted a few times over the centuries. The original colour was vanilla. In the mid-1700s it was painted pale yellow and white then during the reign of Tsar Pavel 1, it was given a more intense yellow shade. Later on, it was repainted deep red which was considered more Russian. In the 1920s the building was repainted with an orange colour. After a couple of decades, the museum got repainted with an iconic mint green colour which we are so familiar with today. The building is so outstanding that it attracts around 3 million tourists every year.

7. It was one of the first public museums

The State Hermitage museum by Andrey Filippov-Wikimedia

Catherine the Great started the hermitage collection in the mid-18^th century but one would have to make a private appointment so that one could view the art. She went ahead to call it the hermitage which means hermit because she saw very few people see its richness. In 1806 emperor Alexander signed a decree establishing the Acrimony chamber which later was opened to the public in 1814.

8. The state hermitage museum is extremely large

The museum has five inter-connected buildings that are the Small Hermitage, the Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, Hermitage Theatre, and the Winter palace. The museum occupies the territory of almost 719,480 sq ft and has 1057 rooms in total. It is also believed that you will need to walk 22 kilometres to see all the parts of the Hermitage. Moreover, there are 117 staircases in the Hermitage and more than 18,800 doors.

9. Interesting and weird things existing in the museum

Some of the interesting and prestigious things to see in the Museum include the Madonna Litta and Leonardo da Vinci art such as Danae. There is also sculpture, silverwork and miscellaneous items too like the celebrated gold peacock clock.

The weird items in the Museum include the Ancient Egyptian mummy and a piece of tattooed human skin. There were also a number of people saying snuffbox was the Russian Emperor Pavel’s favourite murder weapon.

10. Catherine collections

Catherine I of Russia by Bermin-Wikimedia

In the year 1764, Catherine bought more than 200 pieces of art in Berlin. The collection continued to be supplied by German, French dukes, barons and English bankers. These included masterpieces from Rembrandt, Michelangelo and other masters. She continued to order many works of art from the best masters of the time.

She also collected unique objects like carved stones and more. By the time of her death, the collection had reached almost 4000 pieces of art which now they still exist in the State Hermitage Museum.