The Hermitage Museum

Today is Russia Day! It's a pretty new holiday, commemorating this day in 1990 when the Russian parliament formally proclaimed sovereignty over all of Russia. I don't really know what that means...

Anyway, yesterday I took care of getting the 15 borrowed scores photocopied. That was a bit of an ordeal. Even though photocopy centres seem to be privately owned, profit-making ventures, they seem to be terribly inefficient. Lucky for me, there was almost nobody there when I brought in those 280+ pages to be copied (one at a time). Of course, once they began my project, everyone else in this neighbourhood of St. Petersburg came to also get copies, shooting me dirty looks for hogging the employees.

Today, I visited the Hermitage: one of the largest and oldest museums in the world. It was established by Catherine the Great in 1764, has over 3 million items on display, including the largest collection of paintings in the world! It was pretty crazy busy, but it is an absolute must-see for anyone visiting this city. Of course, like the Louvre, one cannot see the entire museum in a day. I focused on Russian culture in the 18th century - germane to my dissertation topic. Enjoy the photos!