Hermitage cats Hermitage cats The Hermitage cats () are a group of cats residing in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The museum has a press secretary dedicated to the cats, and three people act as caretakers. The cats live in the museum's basement, and they also appear on the embankment and on the square during the summer. In previous eras they roamed throughout the museum galleries. In 2010, Maria Khaltunen (also "Khaltunin" or "Haltunen"), who directs the museum's cat programme, stated that there were 60 cats on the museum grounds, even though the staff has a joke that officially the
Hermitage Museum Boris Piotrovsky, former director of the Hermitage Museum. Four small rooms on the ground floor, enclosed in the middle of the New Hermitage between the room displaying Classical Antiquities, comprise the first treasure gallery, featuring western jewellery from the 4th millennium BC to the early 20th century AD. The second treasure gallery, located on the ground floor in the southwest corner of the Winter Palace, features jewellery from the Pontic steppes, Caucasus and Asia, in particular Scythian and Sarmatian gold. Visitors may only visit the treasure galleries as part of a guided tour. Pavilion Hall, designed by Andrei Stackenschneider in