As a first time visitor to the Hermitage, I will be able to talk more about impressions and what it feels like to wander through such a place rather than being able to give very authoritative information. Furthermore, I will try not to become too repetitive with such phrases as "I think" or "to the best of my understanding". I will trust that my readers will keep this warning in mind and forgive me when I get things wrong. So, let me start about the Hermitage.

The Hermitage is much more than just an art gallery, it is even more than a particularly well endowed gallery, for, not only does it exhibit paintings drawings, statuary , furniture, etc., but it itself, that is the physical structure and decoration of the place is on display as well. To begin with the Winter Palace was in fact the place where some of the tsars spent their time during the winter. Then, over an extended period of time a number of tsars and tsarinas added other buildings, bought more art, Russian, European and other and needed more space to exhibit it. As a result more buildings were built and added to the tsars, private, imperial gallery. It became a place where in the beautiful solitude of the place the tsars could wander about in a peaceful, quiet place. Being their place of solitude, they named it the Hermitage.

The tsars being the kind of people they were, The Hermitage grew and grew to become what it is today. I have been taken on a tour through it and even though it filled the hours of the forenoon, and even though what I saw seemed to be without end, I know that I have seen only a tiny fraction of what is there to be seen. If you look at the first two photos included with this, you will see the length of thriver frontage on the Neva that the Hermitage occupies, but, the hermitage does not just have this visible length, but it extends some considerable depth away from the Neva.

After the time of the tsars, The Hermitage fell upon hard times. Paintings were removed from its collection and sold to raise money. Gradually though the Communists realized what an amazing artistic treasure they had received from the tsars and gradually they began to treat it with the respect it deserved, being seen now as belonging to all the Russian people. It was opened to the people and gradually even extended.