Hermitage Rooms 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 Petersburg. The partnership with the Hermitage has since ended and the rooms are no longer known by this name, although they continue to house temporary exhibitions. The project was established in the 1990s under the direction of Lord Rothschild, and is funded by individual and corporate donors and admission fees. Several rooms in the south
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