Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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pre-Slavic tribes as well as riches from the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians. Italian,
Dutch, and Spanish masters are well represented, though Russia's greatest art is housed
in the Russian Museum across town. Planning is key to any Hermitage visit, and an
online tour can be a great preparation. Mornings tend to be full of Russian school groups
except in July and August, which tend to be full of European tour groups. The audiogu-
ide is quite helpful, but the official English-speaking guides hovering around the entrance
can offer more detail and nuance. Be sure to ask if you can set your own itinerary or if
they will show you only specific rooms. It's worth checking the museum website before
you go in order to get a sense of what you want to focus on, and to see which halls are
closed for renovations. A bank machine and post office are available on the ground floor.
Spread around the city are four other parts of the Hermitage Museum complex: The
General Staff Building, Menshikov Palace, Winter Palace of Peter the Great, and the
Museum of Lomonosov Porcelain Factory. Allow yourself a full morning or afternoon in
the Hermitage itself—or a full day, if you can spare it. You won't regret it.
2 Palace Sq. Entrance to Hermitage main collection: through courtyard of Winter Palace, from Palace Sq.
&
812/710-9079.
www.hermitage.ru. Admission to Hermitage Museum 350 rubles for adults (no stu-
dent discount), free for those 16 and under. For English tours for up to 5 people by official museum
guides call
&
812/571-8446.
Admission to other buildings in the Hermitage collection is 300 rubles for
each one, or you can buy a 750-ruble ticket that allows entrance to the main museum and three others
of your choice over the course of 1 day. Main museum Tues-Sat 10:30am-6pm; Sun and Russian holidays
10:30am-5pm. Ticket office closes 1 hr. before museum closing. Metro: Nevsky Prospekt.
2
AROUND PALACE SQUARE
The Winter Palace forms just one element of the magnificent architectural ensemble of
Palace Square (Dvortsovaya Ploshchad)
, the city's most important plaza.
Shaped like a truncated piece of pie, this square isn't large by Russian standards, but it is
certainly grand. It was not part of Peter's original plan for the city, but grew up over the
18th and 19th centuries to accommodate the Winter Palace and the curved General Staff
Headquarters, while opening up at an angle toward the Admiralty and the Neva beyond.
It achieves a perfect sense of balance despite its unusual form, and offers a stunning—and
intentional—vista of the city's elegant lines from any given point. Its architectural beauty
did little to protect it from the city's political upheavals, and the square became a center
of fermenting dissent in the century leading up to the Russian Revolution. The unrest
culminated in the Bolshevik seizure of the Winter Palace via the square that quashed all
hope of retaining aristocratic rule. For decades after the seat of Russian power was moved
to Moscow, Palace Square was the staging ground for obligatory displays of Communist
solidarity and might—until the end of the Soviet regime saw it again become a forum
for antigovernment expression. Politics rarely touch the square today; instead, it fills with
in-line skaters and tour buses. For a calmer experience of the square, show up early in the
morning. Stand in front of the Alexander Column—a 600-ton monolith topped by a
cross-carrying angel, built under Czar Alexander II to celebrate Russian victory over
Napoleon—and imagine all that this square has seen.
The square's chief element after the Winter Palace is the
General Staff Building
(
Gen-
eralny Shtab;
&
812/571-8446
). Its facade, bending around the square for nearly half a
mile, was designed to enclose several facilities, the army's General Staff Headquarters being
just one of them. The czarist-era Ministry of Finance and Foreign Ministry were housed on
the left as you look from Palace Square, linked to the General Staff Building by an unusual,
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