Saint Petersburg (Russia) - Event

St Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum is one of the world's greatest, with an unbeatable collection of fine and decorative arts. Since its foundation in 1764, when Catherine the Great bought 200 Old Masters, it has grown to three million exhibits.

The collection - or the fraction of it that can be displayed at any one time, even in the massive complex of the former Imperial Palace at the centre of St Petersburg (five separate buildings) - requires over 1500 members of staff to look after it!

It is the fine art that the Hermitage is most famous for. Catherine herself was an avid collector and Peter the Great before her had acquired several fine Rembrandts. Tsars Alexander I and Nicholas I added to the collection in the 19th century. There are over 20 Rembrandts, some of the finest Matisses and Picassos in existence (particularly wonderful is Matisse's Dance), da Vincis, Raphaels, Titians, Giorgiones, the Dutch at their best (in the 17th century) and the most impressive collection of French art outside the Louvre.

In an ongoing enterprise to make more of the Hermitage collection available to the public eye, museum director Mikhail Piotrovski is spearheading a project to bring the Hermitage to Europe. Rome and London's Somerset House have hosted works loaned from St Petersburg, and in 2009 the Hermitage Amsterdam Centre opened in the Dutch capital.