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Museums in St. Petersburg
Thanks to its numerous museums, St. Petersburg is actually the capital of the Russian culture. This city saw the maximum development of the most important artistic and cultural events of all Russia - artists, composers, writers and dancers who were born or who worked there.
Leaving apart the well-known Hermitage Museum, to which we will devote an entire section on this Website, there are many other museums worth visiting in the city.
The State Russian Museum is one of the most important of them, entirely dedicated to the art and culture of Russia, whose premises are located near the city's main thoroughfare, called Nevsky Prospekt, in the gorgeous neoclassical Mikhaylovsky Palace, designed by Italian architect Carlo Rossi in the early 19th century. Founded in 1895 by Nicholas I, its main purpose was at first to exhibit to the public the collections of Tsar Alexander III. The museum boasts some 400,000 pieces of art, including Russian icons, paintings, prints, sculptures and decorative and applied arts which trace back all the basic steps of the Russian history.
Another interesting museum is the Russian Ethnographic Museum, wanted by Tsar Nicholas I in 1902. Here are kept a large number of collections, around half a million finds ranging from everyday objects, drawings, paintings and lithographs to photographs documenting the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. The purpose of the museum is to document and preserve the traditions of over one hundred national ethnic groups who then lived within the borders of the former Soviet Union.
The A.V. Suvorov Museum is the first established in the memory and in commemoration of the great military leader A.V. Suvorov (1730-1800) founded in 1904. For its building, motifs typical of the Russian architecture were used, with the addition of features peculiar to the ancient fortresses. Inside the museum displays more than 100,000 objects, many of which belonged to the solder, e.g. his uniform, medals and war trophies.
The Peter and Paul Fortress, with a Baroque architecture, was built in 1733 on the orders of Peter the Great, in order to protect the areas situated near the Neva River. The Fortress is now a very popular museum, from which every day blank shots are fired by its cannons. The Fortress tower, 120 metres high, is the highest point of the city, from where you can enjoy a panoramic view of the whole metropolis.
The State Museum of Theatre and Music is one of the famous works designed by the famous Italian architect Carlo Rossi. Built between 1820 and 1830, the collections displayed inside it were brought from the archives of the imperial theatres and private collections, bearing witness of 250 years of theatrical and musical culture.
Aurora is the name of an old ship, a Russian cruiser, now a floating museum and an important tourist destination of St. Petersburg. Its construction began in the city’s shipyards in 1897 and it was launched on May 11th 1900. It was so named in honour of the battleship Aurora, which defended the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski during the Crimean War.
St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg is one of the most interesting monuments of Russian art and neo-classical architecture of the nineteenth century. It became a museum that boasts the visit of about one million visitors per year since 1931. It was designed by French architect August Montferrand and built between 1818 and 1858.
The Kunstkamera was the first real museum of Russia, situated opposite the Winter Palace. Wanted by Tsar Peter the Great and completed in 1727, it houses the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of Peter the Great, with a collection of about two million pieces. .
The Dostoevsky Literary Memorial Museum was opened in 1971 in the house where the writer lived from 1878 to 1881. In this same flat Dostoyevsky wrote numerous works, including the famous "The Brothers Karamazov". In the flat are kept archival sources, photographs and testimonies of Dostoevsky’s contemporaries. In the most literary part of the museum are displayed environmental sets recalling the writer's travels throughout Europe.
