Hermitage Museum 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 which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items (the numismatic collection accounts for about one-third of them), including
Hermitage Rooms Museum in Moscow as hostages in a trade dispute between a Geneva-based company and the Russian state (owners of both the Hermitage and the Pushkin). The rooms were closed until June 2007 when a new exhibition was put into place. This ran until November 2007 and was titled "France in Russia: Empress Josephine's Malmaison Collection". Hermitage Rooms The Hermitage Rooms was the name by which a series of rooms at Somerset House, London, were known from 2000 to 2007. During this period they were used as a venue for temporary exhibitions from the collection of the Hermitage Museum in Saint