The State
Hermitage is one of the oldest and largest museums in the world. The museum is
located in 5 historical buildings of St. Petersburg, including the Winter Palace,the former residence of
Russian tsars. The buildings of the museum, by themselves, are architectural
masterpieces. The collections of The Hermitage number over 3 million items from
prehistoric to modern times. Magnificent works of art embracing prehistoric
culture, Egyptian art, the art of Antiquity, and great collections of
Western-European paintings and sculptures are displayed in 400 halls of the
museum.
Peter and Paul
Fortress
The Peter and
Paul Fortress was founded by Peter I in 1703. Besides the ancient
fortifications, on the grounds of the fortress one can visit the Sts.Peter and
Paul Cathedral of the early XVIII century with the burial vault of Peter the
Great and other Russian tsars, the museum in Trubetskoy bastion prison,
expositions include The History of St.Petersburg, The History
of the Imperial Mint, Pechatnya or Printing Workshop, and a museum
on cosmonautics and missilery. From the
middle of the 18th century St.Peter and Paul Fortress contained Russia's political prison. The
first inmate was Peter's own son Alexey (Peter supervised his son's torture),
who was followed by other notables such as Dostoevsky, Gorky, Trotsky and
Lenin's older brother, Alexander. The cathedral, though plain on the outside,
has a magnificent baroque interior. Between the cathedral and the Senior
Officer's Barracks is a statue of Peter the Great. Rubbing his right forefinger
apparently brings good luck.
Pushkin Flat Museum
Pushkin died in this house by the Moyka
River in 1837, after a duel with
French soldier of fortune Baron d'Anthes, who had been publicly chasing
Pushkin's beautiful wife, Natalia. The museum includes a Russian-language tour
(English tours can be arranged in advance). The apartment has been
reconstructed to look exactly as it did in the poet's last days. The duel was
widely seen as a put-up job by Tsar Nicholas I, who disliked the famed poet's
radical politics - and who, rumor has it, may have been the one really after
Natalia. For the morbid, on display are the poet’s death mask, a lock of his
hair, and the waistcoat he wore when he died.