page_title: Saint Petersburg
section_title: Museums
hierarchical_section_title: Saint Petersburg / Culture / Museums
caption_attribution_description: English: Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg
context_page_description: Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd, then Leningrad, is a city situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. It is Russia's second-largest city after Moscow. With a population of roughly 5.4 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, as well as the northernmost metropolis in Europe and the world. As an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea, it is governed as a federal city.
  The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after apostle Saint Peter. Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with the birth of the Russian Empire and Russia's entry into modern history as a European great power. It served as a capital of the Tsardom of Russia and the subsequent Russian Empire from 1713 to 1918. After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks moved their government to Moscow.
  As one of the most important tourism centers in Russia, Saint Petersburg received over 15 million tourists in 2018, and is considered an important economic, scientific and cultural centre of Russia.
context_section_description: Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them in historic buildings. The largest is the Hermitage Museum that features the interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to Russian fine art. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
  The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
  A number of museums provide insight into the Soviet history of Saint Petersburg, including the Museum of the Blockade, which describes the Siege of Leningrad and the Museum of Political History, which explains many authoritarian features of the USSR.
  Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum, and Zoological Museum, Central Soil Museum, the Russian Railway Museum, Suvorov Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art, the largest non-governmental Museum of contemporary art in Russia, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniforms and decorations.
caption: The State Hermitage Museum (Hermitage Theatre, Old Hermitage, Small Hermitage and Winter Palace, all part of the current museum complex)
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