This is a difficult post to write!

How can I possibly describe the essence of the Hermitage after a two hour tour? How can I possibly describe St. Petersburg after a two day tour? We had an excellent tour and an excellent tour guide … but after a few hours, my head was swimming with too much information. Too many emperors named Alexander or Nicholas or Peter, and too many Empresses named  Catherine. My image of Russia is from Dr. Zhivago, starring Omar Sharif, plus a few details about Rasputin from high school history. I learned a LOT on our tour. However, I also missed a LOT. I’m sure the tour guide gave us lots of important information while I was busy taking photos of pretty flowers and buildings. Please do not interpret this blog as anything more than my impressions of St. Petersburg after a whirlwind tour.

It took me a long time to figure out how to organize my photos with all this info on tsars and palaces, churches and museums. I finally settled on three different eras:
Peter the Great;
Catherine the Great; and
Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia

Last week, we explored Peter the Great and his Russian Versailles.

This week, the focus is on Catherine the Great and her legacy, The Hermitage Museum

Catherine the Great’s rule is the Golden Age of Russia

Catherine the Great was not Russian. She was a poor German princess, born in Prussia, now Poland. Her name was Sophie. Her  mother had ambitious designs for Sophie to become empress of Russia. When Sophie was 15, her mother sent her to Russia to marry a tsar. Sophie embraced her new life and culture. She learned Russian, converted to Eastern Orthodoxy and changed her name to Catherine. At 16, Catherine married Peter, future tsar and a grandson of Peter the Great. Peter became tsar 17 years later. Six months after Peter became tsar, Catherine organized a coup, had Peter arrested and forced him to abdicate. Peter was assassinated 8 days later.

Could Catherine, a poor German princess, become empress of Russia?

To answer this question, Russia looked at a precedent set by an earlier Catherine, the wife of Peter the Great.

This is Catherine Palace, built by Peter the Great and his wife, Catherine

Peter the Great died without naming a successor. Who would succeed him? An old guard aristocrat? No. His wife, Catherine. A group of commoners had attained positions of great power based on competence during the reign of Peter the Great. In a coup by the commoners, Catherine was named the new ruler of Russia with the title of Empress. The commoners were the real power behind the throne.

Catherine had an extraordinary life. Her parents were Polish and German Roman Catholic peasants. They named her Marta. When she was three years old, her parents died of the plague. Marta was shuffled around various households and ended up as a housemaid for a Russian officer, a friend of Peter the Great. Marta met Peter and they fell in love. She converted to Russian Orthodoxy and changed her name to Catherine. She was cheerful and charming. She was able to calm Peter during his famous rages. They lived together in a log cabin while Peter built St. Petersburg. When Peter became tsar, Catherine wanted a summer palace. She hired a Scottish architect to build her beloved and opulent Catherine Palace.

Peter and Catherine had 12 children. Ten died in childhood. Two survived. Peter died at the age of 43. Catherine became Empress.

Marta, a Polish/German peasant, became Catherine I, the first woman to rule Imperial Russia. This set a precedent for a century of women rulers through her daughter Elizabeth and her granddaughter-in-law, Catherine the Great.

Marta, wife of Peter the Great, became Catherine I, Empress of Russia.
Sophie, wife of Peter, grandson of Peter the Great, became Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia

Catherine died two years after Peter the Great. Her daughter, Elizabeth, became Empresses. Elizabeth found her mother’s palace to be too plain. She had it demolished and replaced with a grand and flamboyant Rococo-style palace.

When Elizabeth died, her ill-fated son. Peter, was tsar for six months until he was arrested, abdicated and assassinated, clearing the way for his wife, Catherine to grab power as Empress, Catherine the Great.

Catherine the Great hated Catherine Palace. She called it “whipped cream” architecture.

The photo above shows just one corner of Catherine Palace.The first thing you notice is that the Palace is HUGE. Without a drone, I could only get a photo of one section.

This is a stock photo to show you the size of Catherine Place. The Palace looked much grander in Elizabeth’s day. More than 100 kilograms of gold were used to gild the exterior. When Catherine the Great became empress, she was aghast at the expense of Catherine Palace and had the gold removed.

Catherine Palace was destroyed by the Germans in World War II

Catherine Palace is in a town 30 km south of St. Petersburg. It was occupied by German troops during the siege of Leningrad in World WAr II. The German forces bombed, burned and destroyed Catherine Palace, leaving a hollow shell. What we see today is a reconstruction from old photos and documents. Work continues to this day.

All that glitters is gold

This photo shows one side of the grand reception room in Catherine Palace. All the doors from one end of the palace to the other are lined up so that when you look through one doorway, you see all the doorways.

All the walls glitter with gold in Catherine Palace

More gold …

This is Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great and Catherine I

This is one wall in the dining room in Catherine Palace

The Amber Room was the “8th Wonder of the World”

The only room in Catherine Palace where photos are not permitted is the Amber Room. This is a stock photo. There is no way that I could have captured the opulence of the room in a photo. The Amber Room is a reconstruction. The original is lost.

A Brief History of the Amber Room

Dubbed the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” the room that once symbolized peace was stolen by Nazis then disappeared for good

While many Americans associate amber with the casing for dinosaur DNA in 1993’s Jurassic Park, the stone has enthralled Europeans, and especially Russians, for centuries because of the golden, jewel-encrusted Amber Room, which was made of several tons of the gemstone. A gift to Peter the Great in 1716 celebrating peace between Russia and Prussia, the room’s fate became anything but peaceful: Nazis looted it during World War II, and in the final months of the war, the amber panels, which had been packed away in crates, disappeared. A replica was completed in 2003, but the contents of the original, dubbed “the Eighth Wonder of the World,” have remained missing for decades.

 

Construction of the Amber Room began in 1701. It was originally installed at Charlottenburg Palace, home of Friedrich I, the first King of Prussia. Truly an international collaboration, the room was designed by German baroque sculptor Andreas Schlüter and constructed by the Danish amber craftsman Gottfried Wolfram. Peter the Great admired the room on a visit, and in 1716 the King of Prussia—then Frederick William I—presented it to the Peter as a gift, cementing a Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden.

 

The Amber Room was shipped to Russia in 18 large boxes and installed in the Winter House in St. Petersburg as a part of a European art collection. In 1755, Czarina Elizabeth ordered the room to be moved to the Catherine Palace.

 

The room glowed with six tons of amber and other semi-precious stones. The amber panels were backed with gold leaf, and historians estimate that, at the time, the room was worth $142 million in today’s dollars.

 

Nazi Looting

 

On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler initiated Operation Barbarossa, which launched three million German soldiers into the Soviet Union. The invasion led to the looting of tens of thousands of art treasures, including the illustrious Amber Room, which the Nazis believed was made by Germans and, most certainly, made for Germans.

 

As the forces moved into Pushkin, officials and curators of the Catherine Palace attempted to disassemble and hide the Amber Room. When the dry amber began to crumble, the officials instead tried hiding the room behind thin wallpaper. But the ruse didn’t fool the German soldiers, who tore down the Amber Room within 36 hours, packed it up in 27 crates and shipped it to Königsberg, Germany (present-day Kaliningrad). The room was reinstalled in Königsberg’s castle museum on the Baltic Coast.

 

The museum’s director, Alfred Rohde, was an amber aficionado and studied the room’s panel history while it was on display for the next two years. In late 1943, with the end of the war in sight, Rohde was advised to dismantle the Amber Room and crate it away. In August of the following year, allied bombing raids destroyed the city and turned the castle museum into ruins. And with that, the trail of the Amber Room was lost.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-amber-room-160940121/

In 1979, the Soviet government decided to construct a replica of the Amber Room in Catherine Palace. It took 24 years to re-build the Amber Room. The room holds 350 shades of amber. In 2003, the new room was dedicated by Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the city of Saint Petersburg.

These are the gates that lead into Catherine Palace

Since Catherine hated the “whipped cream” architecture of Catherine Palace, she wanted her own palace, built in her image … time to leave Catherine Palace and return to St. Petersburg for a tour of Catherine the Great’s Winter Palace, now the Hermitage  Museum.

Alexander Column is a single slab of red granite

Alexander Column is the focal point of Palace Square in St. Petersburg.

I was so overwhelmed by the exterior of the Hermitage that I would have totally missed the Alexander Column, if not for our tour guide.

Once our guide told us about the Alexander Column, I wanted to run down the street to take a photo of the Column with the Hermitage in the background. If you google images of Alexander Column, you will usually see it with the Hermitage in the background … but we were on the ‘Highlight Tour’ so there was no time for me to run down the street for a different photo. In the end, I’m happy with my quick snap of the Column with Peter and Paul Church in the background.

Alexander Column was commissioned to celebrate Russia’s victory over Napoleon (more on this topic later).

England and Russia have a long-standing debate on which country can claim to have the tallest column in the world. The Alexander Column is the tallest triumphal column but the Monument to the Great Fire of London is the tallest freestanding column in the world.

Alexander Column is 83.5′ long and weighs 600 tons. 

The Alexander monolith was quarried in Finland from a single slab of red granite. A special barge was built to transport the Column to St. Petersburg. Now comes the hard part: how do you erect a column that is 83′ long and weights 600 tons? This was 1832. There were no cranes. The answer? You hire a Scot with the perfect name: Andrew Handyside. With 3,000 men, Andrew raised the column in less than 2 hours. The set is so perfect that no attachment was needed at the base. It is fixed in position by its own weight. Andrew later wrote a scholarly paper for the Institution of Civil Engineers, describing “methods of hauling large monoliths”. That title is just too boring. What he did is stunning!

The Catherine Era was the Golden Age of Russia

Catherine was a great admirer of Peter the Great. She continued to modernize and westernize Russia. She even used herself as a guinea pig by getting a smallpox vaccination, very controversial treatment at that time. “My objective was, through my example, to save from death the multitude of my subjects who, not knowing the value of this technique, and frightened of it, were left in danger”. By 1800, approximately 2 million people were vaccinated in Russia.

Catherine the Great is known as the enlightened despot

Catherine built a reputation as a patron of the arts, literature, and education. The Hermitage Museum, which occupies the whole Winter Palace,  began as Catherine’s personal collection.

This above photo of the Hermitage Museum makes it appear as if the Russian army is patrolling the Museum. In reality, it was graduation day for new recruits and they are celebrating.

The Hermitage Museum is the second largest museum in the world. The Louvre is the largest. The Hermitage contains over three million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world.

Catherine started her collection by buying up the best collections offered for sale by the heirs of prominent collectors.

Catherine succeeded in accomplishing a huge achievement in the art world. She collected thousands of impressive pieces of artwork that were numerous in size and value. In her collection, at least 4,000 paintings came to rival the older and more prestigious museums of Western Europe. Catherine took great pride in her collection, and actively participated in extensive competitive art gathering and collecting that was prevalent in European royal court culture. Through Catherine’s art collection, she gained European acknowledgment and acceptance, and portrayed Russia as an enlightened society, another feat that Catherine took great pride in. Catherine went on to invest much of her identity in being a patron for the arts.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermitage_Museum

The Hermitage is a museum in a palace. I didn’t know if I should focus on seeing the Palace, or the artwork in the Palace. It was truly mind boggling. All I can do here is show you a few highlights as we toured a small section of a huge museum in a palace.

This is the throne room in the Winter Palace, now the Hermitage Museum

Every inch of the throne room is opulent

This is a closeup of the inlaid floors in the throne room

Ceilings and chandeliers, all aglow

This is a beautiful fireplace room

The Raphael Loggias are the exact copy of the Gallery in the Papal Palace in Vatican City

The Hermitage is a very popular tourist attraction. There are often long lineups. A great benefit of the tour is that we had early admission to the Hermitage. Only tour groups are admitted early. That’s why I was able to get photos of the Raphael Loggias with almost no tourists.

A disadvantage of a tour is that I did not get to see the Impressionist and post Impressionist collection at the Hermitage. I would have skipped some collections in order to see others, but you can’t pick and choose when you are on a tour. It is a set menu, not a buffet.

Now I will show you just a few highlights of the artwork in the Hermitage.

This statue is Michelangelo’s The Crouching Boy

This is Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna and Child

This is Raphael’s Madonna

The glass that surrounds this work obscured the photo so this is the best I could get.

This is Rembrandt’s Flora

This is Rembrandt’s Old Man in Red

This is the Kolyvan Vase

The vase weighs 19 tons. The vase was put in place and the walls were built around it.

This alcove is dedicated to Napoleon who was defeated by the Russian winter

… and that takes us back to the earlier photo outside the Hermitage of the Alexander Column that celebrates the Russian victory over Napoleon.

This alcove is dedicated to Wellington, who defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo … think ABBA

And that is the end of our whirlwind tour of the Hermitage