Hermitage Amsterdam Hermitage Amsterdam Hermitage Amsterdam is a branch museum of the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg, Russia, located on the banks of the Amstel river in Amsterdam. The museum is located in the former Amstelhof, a classical style building from 1681. The dependency displayed small exhibitions in the adjacent Neerlandia Building from 24 February 2004 until the main museum opened on 19 June 2009. It is currently the largest satellite of the Hermitage Museum, with a total area of and fits with the museum's plan to make its collections accessible to more people. The exhibition area covers and is contained within
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