Saint Petersburg museums
As expected in the cultural capital of Russia, as St. Petersburg has been called, there are many museums. The undisputed leader among them — the Hermitage. Located in the Winter Palace, the Hermitage is the most-visited museum in all of Russia and houses Russia’s richest collection of world paintings. Many other palaces have also become museums, including the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, the Grand Palace in Peterhof, and the Pavlovsk Palace, among others.
In addition to classic museums, St. Petersburg is home to some beautiful and interesting small museums, each with its own theme. St. Petersburg’s first museum, the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in the Kunstkamera building, is dedicated to housing and preserving “natural and human curiosities and rarities,” including fetuses with anatomical abnormalities, minerals, gems and scientific instruments. The house-museums of Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Akhmatova are interesting not only to fans of their writing; they also offer a glimpse into everyday life during different periods of Russian history.
Another group of St. Petersburg’s museums will open the history of the city to you. The Rumyantsev Mansion-museum, the Aurora cruiser-museum and the State Museum of the Political History of Russia number among St. Petersburg’s best historical museums.
Below are some of the museums we often include in our excursions into the cultural capital of Russia.
Dostoevsky Apartment Museum
A small museum was opened in the writer's apartment, which ended up being his last address.
Fabergé Museum in Saint Petersburg
This is one of the news private museums in the city (opened in 2013), and its cornerstone is the collections of masterpieces by the renowned Russian jewelry craftsman, Carl Faberge, which was then acquired by a Russian fund in 2004. This is, first and foremost, the famous collection of Easter eggs that belonged to the Imperial family. Besides those, the collections contain interior design items, tableware, and various decorations.
The museum has special procedures governing visits and guided tours.
Kunstkammer (Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography) in Saint Petersburg
This is the first museum in Russia that was founded by Peter the Great; he organized it in 1714.
State Memorial Museum of Leningrad Defense and Blockade (Siege)
The exhibits showcased in this museum are dedicated to the tragedy that befell St. Petersburg ("Leningrad" in Soviet times), which survived an 872-day blockade during World War II. Here, you can see documents, photographs, and unique material evidence of mass starvation, everyday life, and how the main stages of the blockade developed. The museum took shape hot on the heels of the blockade itself, before the end of the war, and was the first witness to the tragedy, as well as an attempt to make sense of it.
Museum-Apartment of Anna Akhmatova at the Fountain House
This is a very interesting museum, and one which will tell a lot about the life of this poet, who lived in difficult times that are embodied in her creativity and fate itself.
Yusupov Palace on Moika
This is a famous palace owned by one of the oldest and most powerful princely families – the Yusupovs. The palace is renowned for its interiors and for the fact that in these walls Rasputin was killed.
Museum of Political History of Russia
An interesting museum that contains a large number of exhibits that provide a specific, and not just an abstract, understanding of many pivotal events in Russian history.
Hermitage - General Staff Building
In 2014, they moved a collection of impressionist artwork that was in the Winter Palace before.
The Hermitage Museum guided tour (Winter Palace)
The Hermitage is the most visited museum in Saint Petersburg. It is the absolute leader in terms of the number of visitors (3 million per year), and in terms of the size of the exhibition, comparable with the largest museums in Europe.
Russian Museum
This is the central museum for Russian painting in Saint Petersburg. The main building is located on Arts Square. This is an extremely interesting tour, since it covers Russian painting traditions as a whole.