Cruise into St. Petersburg, Russia with Royal Caribbean part 1
On our Northern European Cruise with Royal Caribbean we stopped at St. Petersburg, Russia.
It’s not often I visit locations and don’t find them fascinating. St. Petersburg, Russia is a unique modern city rich with history. We were only there for a day as our cruises left 12 hours later. The time we spent in Russia we learned a lot about the culture and history.
The State Hermitage Museum
We spent a good few hours walking around The State Hermitage Museum. The museum is one of the busiest and full of tourists which can drive you crazy. The museum is a large complex of six buildings, of those six only five are open to tourists. Don’t let the size fool you. You can spend days here and still not see everything.
As the second-largest art museum in the world, the museum houses several art collections from Catherine the Great whom purchased the impressive collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. Many of the art pieces still remain in great condition to this day.
The building occupies 233,345 sq. meters in total area. With over 1,014,806 works of art, 1,125,975 numismatic objects, 214,771 other items such as; Egyptian antiques, classical antiques (the Room of Great Vases), Italian renaissance, 808,695 Archaeological artifacts, and 14,016 arms and armory.
Like I said before you can spend days here and still not see everything.
We spent about 2-3 hours roaming the museum and learning much about each different unique piece within the walls of The State Hermitage.
If you want to visit the State Hermitage, I highly recommend you plan on spending a few days roaming the museum. However, if you were like us and could only stay for a little I would suggest finding what part of the museum you’d like to visit first and go from there. It’s full of amazing pieces of art and priceless artifacts, you will never want to leave… unless you’re being pushed around because of the many other tourists then you’ll want to walk through at a fast pace.
Beautiful! Russia is definitely on my bucket list. I had no idea the State Hermitage Museum was that large!
The photos are beautiful but I’m sure the pieces are even more striking in person. Sometimes, taking a private tour of very popular museums allows you to see the collections without the annoyance of the crowds.
I love museums, and this looks like a great one to visit! Enjoyed your article and pictures, and will look forward to your articles regarding the rest of your trip.
I have never thought about traveling to Russia. A cruise seems like a good way to accomplish that. Russia is fascinating!
I hope to visit in person one day! Thanks for sharing.
Beautiful pictures and a beautiful city!
We were supposed to be in Russia this past spring but alas it was cancelled. I hope to plan a trip there again someday.