Welcome to Russian History Retold, episode 271, The Hermitage.

Last time we told the horrendous tale of the Moscow Show Trials, today we venture into

a story about one of the world's greatest museums, The Hermitage. Founded initially to collect

works of art on May 16, 1703, it didn't really become a real museum until 1764 under the

reign of Catherine the Great. It celebrates its anniversary on December 7th, also known

as St. Catherine's Day in Russia. But it is not the Catherine you think it is. Instead,

it commemorates the martyrdom of St. Catherine of Alexandria, one of the fourteen holy helpers,

who supposedly was beheaded on orders of Roman Emperor Maximinius II around 305 AD.

The word Hermitage means home of a hermit. The building was initially given this name because

of its exclusivity in its early days, because only very few people were allowed to visit. It

wouldn't open to the public until 1852, although I'm sure it wasn't open to everyone, just those in

the higher ranking in society. Initially, it was only the private holding place for the art

gathered by Catherine. Finally, Nicholas I decided to make it a public facility with its

reconstruction and expansion beginning in 1840. In 2022, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg

recorded around 2.8 million visitors, ranking 10th among all art museums worldwide. Although,

with the current situation concerning the war between Ukraine and Russia, I'd venture to

guess that this will be a much lower number in 2023. As for its size, the Hermitage is the second

largest in the world right behind the Louvre in Paris. The gallery space comes in around 67,000

square meters or 720,000 square feet. So if you've ever been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York City, it is about 90,000 square feet larger than that and approximately 60,000 square

feet smaller than the Louvre. So basically, it is still really, really big. The Hermitage is not

just one large building. It's a series of structures all next to each other on the palace and

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