Half-day tour of the State Hermitage Museum

The Hermitage is one of the world's largest museums, with over three million individual objects in its collections. While modern display techniques are increasingly being incorporated into its exhibitions, it is still far from the most visitor-friendly museum, and first-time visitors can easily be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work on display, the somewhat haphazard distribution of departments, and the size of crowds during the high tourist season.

A professional tour guide can therefore be a huge advantage, helping you to cut through the queues and crowded corridors to see all the highlights of the Hermitage collections in the time you have available. If there are particular parts of the collections you are interested in, you can ask your guide in advance to direct you to them, but otherwise our standard shorter tour of the Hermitage will begin with the magnificently ornate state rooms of the Winter Palace then proceed to viewing the masterpieces of Western European art up to the 19th century (including works by Michaelangelo, Rembrandt, Rubens, Poussin and Caravaggio) before stepping further back in time to enjoy the Hermitage's diverse and stunning antiquities collections. You then cross Palace Square to the General Staff Building, where exhibitions included probably the most popular artworks of the Hermitage's collections, the works of the French impressionists and post-impressionists, among them masterpieces by Monet, Cezanne, Gauguin, Picasso and Matisse.

Itinerary and route details