St. Petersburg's most famous building, the Winter Palace not only physically dominates Palace Square and the south embankment of the Neva River, but also plays a central political, symbolic, and cultural role in the three-century history of the city. With the possible exception of the Louvre, there is no museum in the world that rivals the Hermitage in size and quality. Its collection is so large that it would take years to view it in its entirety--at last count, there were nearly three million works on exhibit. The museum is especially strong in Italian Renaissance and French Impressionist paintings, as well as possessing outstanding collections of works by Rembrandt, Picasso, and Matisse.

The first Imperial residence on the site of the Winter Palace was a wooden house in the Dutch style built in 1708 for Peter the Great and his family. This was replaced in 1711 by a stone building, the remains of which formed the foundations of the Hermitage Theatre. Parts of this original palace have now been restored and are open to the public.

The palace served as the winter residence for every ruler of Russia since Peter III, who installed himself there along with his mistress, the Countess Vorontsova. After his wife Catherine the Great seized the throne, she redecorated and appropriated her husband's old quarters. While her son Nicholas I lived in a modest apartment there, his wife Alexandra commissioned the famously luxurious Malachite Room, later to be used as the meeting place for Kerensky's Provisional Government. Nicholas II had his quarters immediately above this room until 1904, when he moved from the increasingly discontented capital to Tsarskoe Selo.

In July of 1917, the Provisional Government took up residence here, thus setting the stage for the October Revolution. After consolidating its power, the Bolshevik government transferred its capital to Moscow, and since that time the Winter Palace has been associated primarily with its role as the Hermitage Museum.

Most visitors will enter the Hermitage displays via the splendid Jordan Staircase, which leads them to the east wing of the Winter Palace, and the rooms known as the Great Enfilade.

Ambassador's (Jordan) Staircase at the Winter Palace / Hermitage Museum - These are some of the most majestic spaces in the Hermitage, rich with the symbolism of Imperial Russia and its military might.

The Small Throne Room of the Winter Palace, St Petersburg, also known as the Peter the Great Memorial Hall, was created for Tsar Nicholas I in 1833, by the architect Auguste de Montferrand. Following a fire in 1837, in which most of the palace was destroyed, the room was recreated exactly as it had been before by the architect Vasily Stasov.

Designed in a loose Baroque style, the throne is recessed in an apse before a reredos, supported by two Corinthian columns of jasper, which contains a large canvas dedicated to Peter I with Minerva by Jacopo Amigoni. In the room proper above dado height the walls are lined with crimson velvet embellished with double-headed eagles of silver thread, above which is a shallow vaulted ceiling.

The focal point of the room is the silver-gilt throne of 1731, made in London by the Anglo-French gold-and-silver-smith Nicholas Clausen.

Armorial Hall of the Winter Palace (Hermitage Museum) - The Armorial Hall of the Winter Palace was intended for grand receptions. It was created by Vasily Stasov in the late 1830s. The entrances to the hall are flanked by sculptural groups of early Russian warriors. Attached to the shafts of their banners were little shields bearing the arms of the Russian provinces, which gave the hall its name. In the centre of the hall is a bowl made of the mineral aventurine by craftsmen of the Yekaterinburg Lapidary Works in the 19th century.

Armorial shields can still be seen on the chandeliers.

The slender columns supporting the balustraded gallery, the frieze with acanthus-leaf ornament and the overall combination of white and gold create an impression of majestic grandeur.

The 1812 Gallery celebrates Russia's victory over Napoleon, and was modeled on the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. It features rows of portraits of Russia's military commanders, crowned by vast equestrian portraits of Alexander I and Frederick Wilhelm III of Prussia. The Grand Enfilade also contains the Winter Palace Cathedral, the Tsars' private chapel, with its soaring domed ceiling, and the splendid, pale-blue Alexander Hall, which was also designed to celebrate victory in the Napoleonic Wars.

The St George (Large Throne) Hall in the Winter Palace was created in the early 1840s by Vasily Stasov who followed the compositional approach of his predecessor, Giacomo Quarenghi. The columned hall with two tiers of windows is finished with Carrara marble and ormolu. Above the throne dais is a bas-relief of St George slaying the dragon.

The great imperial throne was made in London to a commission from Empress Anna Ioannovna (by Nicholas Clausen, 1731-32). The hall has a magnificent parquet floor made from 16 varieties of wood. The grand decor of the hall accords with its function as the setting for official ceremonies and receptions.

Pavilion Hall, designed by Andrei Stackenschneider in 1858, occupies the first floor of the Northern Pavilion in the Small Hermitage. It features the 18th-century golden Peacock Clock by James Cox and a collection of mosaics. The floor of the hall is adorned with a 19th-century imitation of an ancient Roman mosaic.

Peacock Clock (James Cox, 18th century) in display case from the collection of Catherine the Great.

The Foyer of the Hermitage Theatre

The Small Italian Skylight Room in the New Hermitage is one of three enormous interiors lit from above. The vaults of the room are richly decorated with gilded mouldings. The 16th- and 17th-century paintings to be seen here are part of the display of Italian art, one of the largest in the Hermitage. This display occupies 29 rooms and spans a period from the 13th to the 18th century. Particularly noteworthy in this room are works by Veronese and Tintoretto, and also those of artists of the Bolognese and Roman schools, including Annibale Carracci, Guercino, Guido Reni and Carlo Maratti. The room is adorned by the works of 19th-century Russian stonecutters.

This is one of the three huge grand interiors in the New Hermitage that are lit from above. This fact gave the rooms their name. They were intended for the display of large canvases. This one contains a display of 17th- and 18th-century Italian painting in which visitors can see the works of such celebrated artists as Luca Giordano, Giovanni Battista Crespi, Canaletto, Francesco Guardi and Tiepolo.

The vaults of the room are decorated with moulded ornament in which Renaissance motifs predominate. Here, as in other rooms of the New Hermitage, there is furniture created in the 19th century to the designs of Klenze and Montferrand. The room is also adorned by the works of 19th-century Russian stonecutters.

The prototype for the Loggias that the architect Giacomo Quarenghi created for Catherine II in the 1780s was the celebrated gallery in the Vatican Palace in Rome that was frescoed from sketches by Raphael. The copies of the frescoes were made in the tempera technique by a group of artists led by Christoph Unterberger.

The vaults of the gallery contain a cycle of paintings on subjects from the Holy Scriptures, that are collectively known as "Raphael's Bible". The walls are decorated with grotesque ornament, the motifs of which appeared in Raphael's painting under the influence of murals in the "grottos" - the ruins of the Golden House (the 1st-century palace of Emperor Nero)

This is one of the large grand interiors of the Imperial Museum or the New Hermitage. Originally the room, richly decorated with ornamental painting in the Neo-Grecian style, was intended for the display of coins.

Today it houses part of the Hermitage's extremely rich collection of arms and armour that numbers around 15,000 items. The display of Western European artistic arms of the 15th to 17th century presents a wide range of tournament, parade and hunting gear, as well as armour, edged weapons and firearms. They include works by famous craftsmen who worked in the finest armouries in Europe.

Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting - The walls are decorated with 80 paintings on subjects from Ancient Greek myths and literary sources. The artist Georg Hiltensperger created them imitating the ancient encaustic technique - with wax-based paints on brass plates. The vaults carry bas-relief portraits of famous European artists, including the designer of the New Hermitage - Leo von Klenze. The gallery is used to display works by the outstanding Neo-Classical sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822) and his followers