Hermitage Museum devotion, ownership and ultimate sacrifice, showing how the collection came about, how it survived tumultuous revolutionary times and what makes the Hermitage unique today. Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum () is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The second-largest art museum in the world, it was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired an impressive collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. Its collections, of
Hermitage Museum art collections of the Hermitage to the general public for years. There are a series of programs that have aired entitled ‘My Hermitage’ that have been particularly successful. All of these programs are organized by the Director of the Hermitage, Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky, and are quite similar to the broadcasts created by Academician Boris Piotrovsky, who is Mikhail’s father. These programs were first broadcast through the Soviet Union’s ‘First’ channel, airing at the height of the museum’s boom. During this time, this channel recorded more than three million visitors every year, mostly from the Soviet Union. Another program created by