The World famous Hermitage Museum

More quite serious stuff we’re afraid to say. This morning we had booked a three hour tour to the Heritage Museum, reckoned to be one of the World’s greatest Museum and Art Collections.

Our tour commenced at 10am which is 30 minutes before the public are allowed in. This gave us a head start on the hordes and believe us when we say that we were soon joined by thousands of fellow visitors, including some huge groups from Cruise Ships and an appreciable number of kamikaze oriental herds (more of them in the next blog).

The Museum is enormous with much of it housed in the Winter Palace. In three hours our guide Olga showed us (and an Irish couple) only a fraction of the exhibits however we managed to see all of the highlights, which after the State Rooms were art based. In terms of artists we saw examples of the World’s best including Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Rafael, Rembrandt, Goya, Velasquez, El Greco, Rubens, Van Dyck and Canaletto (plus the sculptor Michelangelo) to ‘name drop’ just a few.

Here are some pictures of our visit.....Read more