The Hermitage and St Petersburg

St Petersburg, the imperial capital founded by Peter the Great on the Neva delta, is Russia's most beautiful and European city, a UNESCO World Heritage ensemble of canals, grand avenues, pastel palaces and golden domes. Its supreme treasure is the Hermitage, housed in the vast, sumptuous Winter Palace of the tsars, one of the largest and finest art museums in the world, its endless gilded halls holding masterpieces from ancient times to the Impressionists. Beyond it lie the golden spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress, the soaring St Isaac's Cathedral, the mosaic-clad Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood and the fountains of Peterhof, a city built to dazzle.

History

Catherine the Great began her collection in 1764 by buying from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky the paintings he had gathered for Frederick II of Prussia, who would not take them after the Seven Years' War: 225 or 317 works by different accounts, mostly Flemish and Dutch, among them Rembrandt's Danaë and Frans Hals's Portrait of a Young Man with a Glove, both still in the museum, which marks its founding each year on 7 December. Yury Felten built an extension east of the Winter Palace in 1764-1766, Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe added the Northern Pavilion on the Neva in 1767-1769, and by 1775 galleries joined them to hold her collections in what is now the Small Hermitage, which few people were then allowed to see. The museum has been open to the public since 1852, and today its more than three million items fill six historic buildings along the Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace (Wikipedia, Hermitage Museum).

Highlights

• The Hermitage - the vast art museum in the imperial Winter Palace.
• The canals and palaces - the pastel palaces and waterways of the centre.
• Church on Spilled Blood - the mosaic-covered onion-domed church.
• Peterhof - the tsars' palace of golden fountains near the city.

When to go

May to July, culminating in the famous White Nights when the sky scarcely darkens, is the loveliest time, with mild weather and the palaces and fountains at their best; winter is beautiful but harsh and dark. The long summer light is perfect for the canals and grand facades.

Good to know

The Hermitage is enormous and hugely popular, so its main halls can be crowded and a single visit only scratches its treasures, rewarding a focused route or more than one day. As one of the world's greatest museums within one of Europe's most beautiful cities, all pastel palaces, canals and golden domes, though, the Hermitage and St Petersburg are magnificent.

Nearby

Peterhof, Pushkin's Catherine Palace and the fortress on the Neva lie around the city.

Key facts