In St. Petersburg, on the Dvortsovaya embankment of the Neva, close to the Palace Square, stands the State Hermitage Museum. A rare architectural beauty building in the Baroque style. The history of the Hermitage can be traced from 1712, when in its place was built the first house for Tsar Peter the Great. The royal rooms were called Wedding Chambers, apparently in anticipation of the alleged marriage of the monarch.
At the same time, the Neva embankment was built, which was named Dvortsova. Four years later the plot of land under the Wedding Chambers was expanded to the future Winter Palace and the construction of the royal residence began. The house was built a small, two-story, outside was without any excesses, but the interior trim had a rich, red marble.
In 1723, the Winter Palace of Peter the Great was completed with all the annexes and services. And two years later the Russian Emperor Peter the Great passed away. The empty house was visited by Catherine the First, but soon she also died. In 1731, the royal family and the royal court returned from Moscow. However, the queen Anna Ioannovna preferred to settle in the Large and comfortable house of Apraksin. The further fate of the Winter Palace is unenviable, it was used for various needs.
In the end, the Winter Palace went to scrap, and in its place a new one was constructed, which also did not last long. There was a third and then a fourth. Each new construction added architectural advantages to the Palace, and the building that currently stands between the Neva and the Palace Square is the last, the fifth in a row, the Winter Palace. Its construction was completed in 1762 and from that time the Winter Palace became the residence of Russian monarchs. This continued until 1904, while Tsar Nikolai II did not move to Tsarskoe Selo.
In the liberated Winter Hospital was placed, and then the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg was occupied by the provisional Kerensky government . Immediately after the revolution, the Winter Palace became a museum. Now the Winter Palace Hermitage is part of the museum complex "The State Hermitage". There are no equal to this museum. Its architectural merits are indisputable, and luxury enfilad inside can do honor to any oriental sheikh.
During the Hermitage's existence, 3 million different exhibits were collected. In the museum, the exhibition halls are oriented around the countries, for periods of antiquity and for the value of objects. The rarest artefacts obtained during the excavation replenish the collections of the Hermitage. In glass cases you can see seals in the form of cylindrical knurls, which are about three thousand years old. In the Egyptian hall is the original sarcophagus of Pharaoh Ramses II.
Real armor of medieval knights stand along the walls, about six thousand exhibits are stored in the gallery of jewels, Tekin carpets that are more than a thousand years old lie on the floor and hang on the walls. Even the Stone Age "presented" the museum with silicon axes, hunting spears and simply heavy stones, which ancient people used in their simple farming. When a visitor enters the Hermitage, he manages to examine only a hundred-thousandth of the museum's wealth. And to get acquainted with all the exhibits a person will need several years of continuous inspection.