The State Hermitage Youth Education Center the history and traditions of different countries and nations. The Youth Center was launched in 2000 when Mijaíl Borisovich Piotrovsk, Director of The Hermitage, signed the order for the creation of the Student Club which bears the same name as the museum. Since 2011, it has been located in located in the east wing of Saint Petersburg’s General Staff Building, and since its founding it’s been supervised by curator Sofía Vladimirovna Kudryavtseva. At the core of the Student Club are thematic sections, which are managed by museum staff. Membership is open to students or graduates from universities in Saint Petersburg
Hermitage Museum literally "people who live alone", which is in turn derived from ἐρημός ("erēmos"), "desert". The building was initially given this name because of its exclusivity - in its early days, only very few people were allowed to visit. Originally, the only building housing the collection was the "Small Hermitage". Today, the Hermitage Museum encompasses many buildings on the Palace Embankment and its neighbourhoods. Apart from the Small Hermitage, the museum now also includes the "Old Hermitage" (also called "Large Hermitage"), the "New Hermitage", the "Hermitage Theatre", and the "Winter Palace", the former main residence of the Russian tsars. In recent