Day 13 - Another beautiful day in St. Petersburg - Hermitage Museum

 

Day 2 and final in St. Petersburg.

We did a four-hour guided tour of the Hermitage. It would take ten YEARS to take in the entire collection. The building interiors themselves are works of art, THEN there are the collections. Overall just overwhelming. 

Leaving this evening - next stop is Helsinki, Finland.


Ho hum, another day in St. Petersburg, weather continued to be perfect!

Queueing up to enter the Winter Palace, first of five interconnected palaces that make up the core of the Hermitage...


Made it in the door. It was pretty crowded but not overwhelmingly so... Per our tour guide, a “5” day for crowds since we were moving...

Stairway leading into the first collection...


... which consisted of 300+ paintings of the military leaders that helped defeat Napoleon. Posing with Alexander (and his horse). 

Another display hall, incredible ornamentation throughout.


Hall of Arches, the top of each arch has a painting by Raphael depicting biblical stories.

A close up of one of the arches.


The throne room of the Czars... you know, of the Czars.

A nine-ton granite bowl, they actually installed the room around it...


There was lots of royal furniture strewn throughout the Hermitage. Angela opined that this table would look good in our dining room...

A statue of Jupiter, every palace absolutely needs one of these... 


An amazing painting by Rembrandt. There were 24 of these in their own room... We also saw two paintings by Da Vinci, and a statue by Michelangelo. It went on and on....

On our way back to our ship, a view across the Neva...